PAUL McCARTHY

In this exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London, McCarthy will construct an installation within the North Gallery, utilizing a disused theater set as a location for drawing, digital recording and AI interaction. This format is part of a trajectory in McCarthy’s work going back to the 1960s of drawing and painting as action or performance.

The exhibition will display a continuation of themes explored in improvised performances between artist Paul McCarthy and German actor Lilith Stangenberg entitled ‘Adolf & Eva, Adam & Eve,’ a satirically uncompromising oeuvre. This project reflects McCarthy’s lifelong exploration of bodily abjection, human entanglement, power, Hollywood and the underbelly of the 20th- and 21st-Century’s cultural and political climate. The works on view will serve as documentation of both McCarthy’s incisive critical lens and his practice of synthesizing performance, film, painting, drawing, sculpture and sound.

the trial the god dog president father may I the subject of the inside and the outside the outside and the inside of the architecture the view from the inside out to the outside the view from the outside into the inside the set sculpture enclosure in the inside of the architecture the back of the set sculpture enclosure reformed as the outside of the enclosure the front of the set enclosure reformed as the inside of the enclosure inside outside outside as inside god as dog dog as god corporate god dog corporate punishment corporation punishment president of the corporation corporate president as god dog president as god dog judge and jury thumbs down exiled thumbs down tortured thumbs down executed the window of the architecture as outside to the inside inside to the outside inside architecture set sculpture enclosure inside of the set sculpture enclosure is the platform as pedestal as bed as platform drawing as markings of inside outside on the outside of repetition of closeted events and past and present thoughts from the inside acted out through unresolved characters as a distraction the actions reformed in the set sculpture enclosure inside the architecture streamed to the outside of the architecture the recorded daily action altered by the machine collaboration

Paul McCarthy 2024