Artist Sam McKinniss, known for his internet-sourced celebrity portraits exploring fandom and parasocial relationships, is opening a new exhibition titled “Law and Order” at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in New York on September 6. The show shifts focus to figures of crime and justice, including “Hot Felon” Jeremy Meeks, Luigi Mangione, art dealer Mary Boone (as portrayed by Parker Posey in the 1996 film *Basquiat*), and a painting of Alcatraz, the former prison that President Donald Trump has proposed reopening. McKinniss describes the work as tracing the parameters of a top-down worldview in an era of new tyrannies. In an interview with CULTURED, he discusses his studio routine, creative influences like Martha Argerich, and the informal group chat that first sees his works-in-progress.
This exhibition matters because it marks a thematic evolution for McKinniss, moving from pop-culture celebrity to the charged intersection of law, crime, and public obsession. By painting both lawbreakers and law enforcers, he continues his meditation on mediated images and collective fascination, now applied to figures who embody societal conflict. The show also engages with contemporary political discourse, notably through the Alcatraz painting referencing Trump’s policy proposal, positioning McKinniss’s work as a commentary on power and perception in the current moment.