Bio

Born in Paris in 1961, Magee spent his early years moving between Tripoli, London, and Texas. His father, a geologist and archaeologist, took him on trips through the American Southwest, where he began collecting small objects that would later inform his practice. As a young adult he worked on a seismic truck in Laredo, Texas, recording vibrations sent into the earth to determine underlying geologic formations. He later served as the chief photo archivist for the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, an experience that further shaped his way of looking and gathering.

He holds an MFA from Pratt Institute and a BA in art history from Trinity University in San Antonio. Magee has exhibited widely, including at the Phoenix Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the Albright Knox Gallery, the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, and the Tamarind Institute. He was the 2017 recipient of the Arlene and Morton Scult Contemporary Forum Artist Award at the Phoenix Art Museum and has received fellowships from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in 2007 and 2015, a New York State Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2002, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1991. His work is held in the collections of the Tucson Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, among others. He is the subject of a monograph published by Radius Books in 2018. Magee lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona.

CV