PAUL MCCARTHY : WS SPINOFFS, WOOD STATUES, BROWN ROTHKOS

Описание: A new Film by Eric Minh Swenson

Opening: Saturday 1 July 2017, 6 – 9 pm
Los Angeles… Hauser & Wirth is pleased to announce ‘Paul McCarthy. WS Spinoffs, Wood Statues, Brown Rothkos,’ the gallery’s first exhibition in Los Angeles devoted to the provocative and influential work of acclaimed LA-based artist Paul McCarthy. Opening 1 July, this exhibition presents ‘spinoffs’ from White Snow, a major ongoing project within the artist’s multidisciplinary practice that subverts the beloved 19th century German folktale ‘Schneewittchen’ (Snow White) and the modern interpretation of that story in Disney’s 1937 animated classic ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ Never before exhibited in Los Angeles, the works on view – nine monumental carved black walnut sculptures of Snow White, the Prince, and Dopey, alongside arresting wall hangings – seek to disrupt traditional notions of art and culture, while introducing viewers to McCarthy’s tireless exploration of mediums.
The exhibition is on view through 17 September 2017.

About the Exhibition : Over the past 50 years, Paul McCarthy has committed his practice to performance, photography, painting, sculpture, film, and installation, to ‘propos[e] that reality itself can fluctuate.’ His protean oeuvre has stirred lively debate, raising critical questions about accepted norms. Connecting seemingly disparate bodies of work through humor, derision, and art historical parallels, McCarthy undermines America’s projected normalcy, pitting archetypal narratives against the messier realities of human drives and desires. Family systems, along with mass media and its effects on the development of children, are at the center of a sprawling practice that focuses on smashing society’s double standards and hypocrisies.

The theme of Snow White first appeared publicly in McCarthy’s work in 2009, with an exhibition of ‘White Snow’ drawings that became the basis for a group of sculptures presented in his 2011 exhibition ‘The Dwarves, The Forest’ at Hauser & Wirth New York. This landmark exhibition featured a series of black bronze dwarves, sculpted from earlier drawings, an important starting point in the exploration of the artist’s White Snow project.

In his new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, Snow White and her cohorts are transmuted through a process that begins with commercially produced, collectible Disney figurines – totems of unstintingly perfect proportions. Through McCarthy’s laborious, performative approach, those ‘tchotchkes’ are freed from their original predetermined ratios, as if released from societal repression and infantilization. With their gaping mouths, twisting necks, and multiplying heads, the twelve sculptures on view harken to the dynamism of classical Baroque sculpture and pay tribute to the history of classicism.

The exhibition presents these works in juxtaposition with a group of McCarthy’s Brown Rothkos, sculptural, monochromatic wall hangings comprised of carpet covered in foam and sprayable polyurethane coating. Carpet, a regularly used ground material supporting the artist’s large-scale performative installations, has been ‘elevated’ here from the floor to the walls, and repurposed as a medium for expression. During the making of the vast set for ‘WS,’ McCarthy’s monumental multimedia work presented at the Park Avenue Armory in 2013, McCarthy intentionally placed carpets under the forest’s fantastical trees, allowing residue from their fabrication to adhere to the surface of the carpets. As the individual trees were rotated and sprayed with coating, the foam and polyurethane dropped onto the carpets, a deliberate action orchestrated by the artist. Over the course of the formation of the forest, McCarthy examined the carpets and moved them accordingly to achieve desired variations in surface, texture, and thickness. The final collection of specifically selected wall hangings on view in this exhibition showcases the boundlessness of McCarthy’s own performance as ‘artist’ and the purposeful transfer of energy leading to an ensuing action of calculated creation.

For more info on Eric Minh Swenson visit his website at thuvanarts.com. His art films can be seen at thuvanarts.com/take1

Instagram : @ericminhswenson

Eric Minh Swenson also covers the international art scene and his writings and photo essays can be seen at Huffington Post Arts : http://m.huffpost.com/us/author/eric-...