The pristine energy of Robert McAn’s art vibrates at a supersonic level, creating a resonant and paradoxical silence in which thoughts can breathe and expand. Whether the piece is one of McAn’s lyrical sculptures or one of his latest works on canvas, its cool intensity seizes the imagination. The form is deceptively simple, yet the content permits layer upon layer of reflection.

McAn is known for his sculptures that include handmade, small-scale trees, oddly dimensioned chairs, and other shapes, as well as miniature found objects. The composition of these “open ended poems” is deliberately unexpected, nudging perception into uncharted territory. A recent, more abstract sculpture is a very narrow, six-foot ladder set into a mirror base. Painted a brilliant yellow, it preempts the viewer’s attention and then “disappears” into a hole in the floor, an illusion created by the mirror.

“This past year, I have been thinking about the next step,” says McAn. “I wanted to work on canvas. I wanted to express my viewpoint in new ways.” He found his logical progression close at hand, as artists do. McAn, a human dynamo, began a dual career in studio art and arts management while still in graduate school. His longtime position as membership and special events manager at the Kimbell Art Museum involves him in a deluge of paper. In the normal course of shredding documents one day, something clicked. He observed the sculptural possibilities in the tumble of paper strips, as well as the theoretical content of the forever-altered physical subject. Back at the studio, he began to shred his personal papers and ephemera: very old tax returns, credit card statements, mortgage documents, and art magazines. He found a whole new artistic and visual vocabulary, a touchstone for intellectual evolution as well as a medium that promises rich avenues of exploration and experimentation.

“I like to work fast,” he says, “and I love the idea of using what comes into our lives every day. Each part of the creation is outside myself, so working with these topical materials becomes self-referential but not emotional. The culture is doing it; I’m not attached to it.” McAn soaks the shreds in glue, sprays them with glue again, then mounts them on canvas. In the process, he refines the visual chatter into disciplined poetry. The final outcome is subtle and elegant almost to the point of austerity, but it buzzes and crackles like a high-voltage wire.

Part of McAn’s museum job consists of signing his name to documents on a constant basis. “Our signature becomes more who we are than who we are,” he observes. And yet, there is a certain anonymity to that process. He alludes to it by using a rubber stamp that says “confidential” on the surface of some collages, signaling that there is a lot more underneath. With economy of means and understated wit, McAn delineates the procedure by which documents create (and shred) our identities with absolutely no influence from us. Society and the government, he suggests, define our lives through the data generated during a lifetime.