PAUL McCARTHY

4 February – 17 April 2025

Opening Reception: 4 February, 6 – 8 pm

London

One of the leading contemporary American artists of his generation, Paul McCarthy has developed a distinct and subversive artistic practice throughout his long career, which now spans more than five decades.

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

About the Artist

Paul McCarthy

Paul McCarthy is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artists. Born in 1945, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he first established a multi-faceted artistic practice, which sought to break the limitations of painting by using unorthodox materials such as bodily fluids and food. He has since become known for visceral, often hauntingly humorous work in a variety of mediums—from performance, photography, film and video, to sculpture, drawing and painting.

During the 1990s, he extended his practice into installations and stand-alone sculptural figures, utilizing a range of materials such as fiberglass, silicone, animatronics and inflatable vinyl. Playing on popular illusions and cultural myths, fantasy and reality collide in a delirious yet poignant exploration of the subconscious, in works that simultaneously challenge the viewer’s phenomenological expectations.

Whether absent or present, the human figure has been a constant in his work, either through the artist‘s own performances or the array of characters he creates to mix high and low culture, and provoke an analysis of our fundamental beliefs. These playfully oversized characters and objects critique the worlds from which they are drawn: Hollywood, politics, philosophy, science, art, literature, and television. McCarthy’s work, thus, locates the traumas lurking behind the stage set of the American Dream and identifies their counterparts in the art historical canon.

McCarthy 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, where he influenced future generations of west coast artists and he has exhibited extensively worldwide. McCarthy’s work comprises collaborations with artist-friends such as Mike Kelley and Jason Rhoades, as well as his son Damon McCarthy.

Current Exhibitions