Burn Me!

BURN ME !

FEATURING: 

JOHN JOYCE • NASTYA KLYCHKOVA • LEE LOZANO • ROBERT MALLARY • DAMON MCCARTHY • PAUL MCCARTHY • JASON RHOADES • JASMINE RUDOLPH • MOLLY TIERNEY • SEAN TOWNLEY • JOHANNA WENT + MORE

MAY 17 - JULY 5, 2025

OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, MAY 17, 5-7PM

ARTIST TALK: SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 2PM 

Burn Me! is an exhibition that encapsulates the lived experience of much of the Los Angeles community. The personal disasters many of us are living through each day after the Eaton and Pacific Palisades Fires, compounded with the radical rightwing political actions currently being enforced by the White House and President Trump motivated us to show the visual and physical turmoil of the moment. We will present this in two main spheres of work: pieces that survived the Fires and political works addressing the compromised state of our union. Even if you haven’t lost your home during the two massive fires in Southern California in early January of 2025, doesn’t mean you don’t feel the massive devastation it has had on the art community of Los Angles. We are all living this compounded experience.
 
In working on this press release I can’t avoid a first-person point of view as the deeply personal nature of this show can’t be exercised. This show started when we found the art works left standing on our properties in Altadena, where our homes burned down. The heat and smoke left a patina on some of the bronzes, while others warped and melted so much that they became different works; all embodying the devastation of this reality. Two matching bronze works, Small Santa Butt Plug, belonging to me and my brother Damon McCarthy, were found deep in the debris of our homes and studios that used to be.
 
The title of the exhibition, Burn Me!, comes from a Wally Hedrick painting owned by the McCarthy family that was lost in the Eaton Fire. This painting was a strong political protest work of an American Flag with bold black text stating “Burn Me!.” Wally Hedrick (1928-2003), who is co-represented by The Box LA and Parker Gallery, was an adamant political artist based in the Bay Area. This work was dated 1990, a time when George Bush Senior was newly elected and bringing in the conservative reign that now blankets America. Another important early work of Hedrick’s lost in the Eaton Fire, a companion piece to Burn Me!, was also of an American flag, with the word Peace (1953) on it, made a year before Jasper Johns’ Flag (1954-55). The sadness of these losses runs alongside the verdant anger that we feel in the political fraught we live in today full of rising authoritarianism, state violence, patriarchy, censorship, and collective resistance. 
 
Burn Me! inspired how this exhibition, curated by Paul McCarthy, Molly Tierney and I, came to be. We all lost our homes, many precious artworks and are working to revitalize our lives, while also being faced with how to grow and create in a culture being squashed by the political state, we are surrounded by fire loss and political oligarchy. The collapse of these two worlds cannot be separated especially amongst artists and humans, like us, who are constantly fighting against the conservative right. These expressions are not seen more clearly than in a new video work by my father, Paul McCarthy, titled NPP1P2, WAR PIG, Drawing Session (2025). A video using AI to create a constantly morphing figure of the Artist on his hands and knees making a large drawing, transforming into various mutilated military captains, pigs, creatures, artists. 
 
The exhibition will include many pieces that have survived the blaze, some directly affected by the fire, like a melted Perfect World Park Bench (2001) and damaged Perfect World Swing Set (2001) by Jason Rhoades, and a collaborative work by Molly Tierney and John Joyce left on Tierney’s property, Untitled Tableau (2016-2025). These works will be shown alongside politically charged works that are both historical, like a Robert Mallary from 1960 with cardboard drenched in fiberglass in the shape of the continental United States, to a recent work of Sean Townley, Fasces with Plow (2024) directly addressing the absentee government that surrounds us.
 
One historical work present will be a Lee Lozano drawing, I got fucked in the ass by ConEdison (1962) and was likely referencing a controversy in New York involving a possible nuclear plant. The title of this work eerily similar connotation to the lawsuits being taken against Southern California Edison for their possible fault in the Eaton Fire. The reality of Americans being the victims of irresponsible utility companies and large corporations, has spanned decades of our lives. The faults of this reality cannot be understanded.
 
As we were developing this exhibition, Johanna Went serendipitously got in touch with me about a new series of embroidered works she and Jasmine Rudolph had started titled Rage Craft (2025), that were a natural fit for the exhibition. These 10 x 10 inch works began when Trump came into office and the images have been inspired by various fucked up situations in our political and cultural world. They are by far the most colorful works in the exhibition, but they represent the sad and awful realities presented with a coating of dark humor.  

The objects in the gallery are presented to invite, process and engage the viewer. The visceral gothic quality of this exhibit is deliberate. Facing the harmful experiences of these times is not easy. But there is hope that by experiencing and better understanding these spaces via objects and videos we can graduate, comfort and empower our own realities.  
 
-Mara McCarthy