Paul McCarthy
October 2021
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Paul McCarthy
Parts Make Up a Hole
October 9 – December 18, 2021
Opening Reception October 9th, 4-8pm
Connected groups with parts, make up a hole. Explanation central hubs trunks of trees, as metaphors, connected, a mixing of species, of one project with the other. White Snow WS Throne platform the head lifted appropriated from Snow White head sitting on the top of older body form of Paenis, a spin off attempted sculpture interpretation of, from C.P. Caribbean Pirate script drawing Paenis 2015. The Inner connection between pieces related to central hubs, tree trunks as performances as breeders of branches. Chop Chop two sculpture objects as an interpretation of a drawings leading to realization, light bulb, that they could be one sculpture object as a barge, raft floating on a sea of carpet. Spewed process garbage dumped off the ass end of the sculpture. The static characters involved in an action, an interpretation of inner death voyage involving castration, amputation, the act of body elimination, a subconscious downward spiral. A reflection of the Caribbean Pirates dizzy Disneyland joy ride. The A&E Drawing Session 2019, 2020 and 2021 with Lilith Stangenberg Eva/Eve as her she with Adolf/Adam as he him in a day after day night action dreaming as Adolf/Adam and Eva/Eve strata structure of totem similar to she said to the throne and chop chop platforms of staked and stacking of said object. Ending beginning again in 2021 feature performance involvement as male and female archetype Adolf Eva and or Adam Eve before Adolf Adam American and Eva Eve Marilyn Monroe pretend in the Garden of Eden previously as Max and Lucia from the enclosure, The Maze.
-Paul McCarthy, 2021
Parts Make Up a Hole, is Paul McCarthy’s second solo exhibition at The Box LA. We’re excited to present three works never before shown in Los Angeles including two large sculptures and one large scale drawing, along with corresponding video works. This grouping seeks to explore the parallels between three of McCarthy’s major bodies of work from the past two decades: Caribbean Pirates (2001-2016), a collaboration with Damon McCarthy, White Snow (2008-2017), and A&E, Adolf & Eva/Adam & Eve (2019-Present).
The two sculptures on display both embody the artist’s method of abstracting a form by sculpting, stacking, mutilating and reforming clay, wood, metal and foam. Both Chop, Chop, Chopper, Amputation (Affected), 2013-2016, and WS Throne, Paenis, 2014-2019, actualize large script drawings from the Caribbean Pirates project; however, WS Throne, Paenis, is more of a sculptural collage that emerged when McCarthy added a colossal Snow White head (originally carved for his White Snow project) onto the Paenis sculpture from Caribbean Pirates. Caribbean Pirates and White Snow are projects that each include large scale installations, sculptures, drawings and videos. The large drawing, A&E, EVA ADOLF, TABLE DRAWING, Santa Anita session, 2020, belongs to a group of works stemming from McCarthy’s current multidisciplinary A&E project. The acronym “A&E” at once stands for Adolf & Eva, Adam & Eve, and Arts & Entertainment. McCarthy produced the drawing while in character as versions of Adolf Hitler, while the actor Lilith Stangenberg, his counterpart in the drawing session/performance, played versions of Eva Braun.
A selection of videos will be shown in the smaller exhibition galleries that correspond with each of the three major bodies of work represented here including Caribbean Pirates- Pirate Party, 2005, and WS Mammoth, 2013. The third video A&E, EVA ADOLF, TABLE DRAWING, Santa Anita session, 2020-2021, documents the production of the drawing of the same name.
McCarthy, born in 1945 in Salt Lake City, Utah, earned a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1969, and an MFA in multimedia, film and art from USC in 1973. For 18 years, he taught performance, video, installation, and art history in the New Genres Department at UCLA. McCarthy began doing films and performances in the late 1960s, and in the 1970s began making video performances that continued up until the 1980s, when he exclusively began producing extended video actions in constructed environments/sets. He has maintained a practice of drawing and producing sculptures since the mid 1960s. McCarthy worked without much public attention until the early 1990s, when two exhibitions in his home city of Los Angeles brought attention to his work: one in 1991, a solo exhibition at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, where he showed Bossy Burger, and then another in 1992, Paul Schimmel’s Helter Skelter, a group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. A few recent exhibitions to highlight include: Hauser & Wirth, ‘Paul McCarthy. A&E Sessions – Drawing and Painting’, New York NY in 2021, Hammer Museum, 'Paul McCarthy. Head Space, Drawings 1963-2019', Los Angeles CA in 2020, Xavier Hufkens, 'Paul McCarthy. Mixed Bag', Brussels, Belgium in 2019, M Woods Museum, 'Paul McCarthy. Innocence. Video Works 1970-2013', Beijing, China in 2018, Hauser & Wirth, 'WS Spinoffs, Wood Statues, Brown Rothkos', Los Angeles CA in 2017, Fundació Gaspar, 'WS & CSSC, Drawings and Paintings', Barcelona, Spain in 2017, Henry Art Gallery, 'Paul McCarthy. White Snow, Wood Sculptures', Seattle WA in 2016, Portikus, 'Mike Bouchet & Paul McCarthy', Frankfurt am Main, Germany 2014, Park Avenue Armory, 'WS', New York NY in 2013.
This exhibition is presented in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth.