ART-PRESENTATION:Paul McCarthy-Alpine Stories and other Dystopias

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.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hauser & Wirth Archive

Two simultaneous exhibitions with Paul McCarthy that are united by the artist’s focus upon intractable myths, fantasies, and delusions coursing through contemporary society and consumer culture. “Alpine Stories and other Dystopias” with a selection of the artist’s drawings, photographs, sculptures, and video work from his acclaimed series and the online exhibition “A&E Drawing Session, Santa Anita”, that unveils a new series of large scale drawings from McCarthy’s latest multidisciplinary project “A&E” (2019- ). In “Alpine Stories and other Dystopias”, McCarthy looks beneath the endearing façades of classic Disney productions and the sanitized versions of European fables, to excavate the untamed urges and pathologies of their real world parallels. Deploying humor and irony he fleshes out familiar characters as avatars of the libidinousness, violence, conflict, and chaos of human society. The walnut sculpture “WS, White Snow Dopey Dopey Head, Five Feet” (2014), for example, conjures perverse visions of Snow White’s relationship with the dwarf Dopey from Disney’s animated classic film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937). This sculpture is among five White Snow works in the exhibition that take the famous fairytale as a springboard for exploring the Oedipal complexities of family, the institutionalization of history, and the urges of pop culture consumption. Among these works is the large scale sculpture “White Snow Head” (2012), a flesh-colored silicone rendering of the princess with the aspect of a toppled idol from antiquity. Taking on another beloved icon, McCarthy’s “Santa (with Butt Plug) Bronze” (2004) embraces debauchery and desire as part of the territory where our fundamental impulses collide with our most cherished myths and hypocritical societal norms. The artist has stated that “the purity of Alpine culture is not pure”. He explored this notion in his landmark 1992 video work “Heidi”, made with Mike Kelley. The opus, on view here, was inspired by the eponymous 1881 children’s book by Johanna Spyri, a story not uncoincidentally made into a Disney television spectacular in 1993. “Heidi File” (2000), a collection of photographs taken from found images, finds McCarthy returning to the iconic Swiss character as subject matter. Using material drawn from posters, maps, magazines, and other ephemera, he explores the many possible incarnations of the innocent mountain girl. By displaying the different representations of the heroine and her Alpine environment, McCarthy juxtaposes the banality of advertisements and found objects, with their insidious manipulation of ‘innocence’, to awaken viewers to the darker dystopian truths of mass consumer culture.

Info: Vieux Chalet, Oberbortstrasse 24, Gstaad, Duration: 18/7-15/8/20, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.hauserwirth.com