Paul McCarthy
Paul McCarthy lives and works in Los Angeles / Altadena, California.
He holds degrees from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City (where he was born), the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is known for raw, visceral work that has taken form in a wide variety of media, playing on illusions, cultural myths, and obsessive activities ranging in scale from intimate to monumental. His practice evolved from painting and drawing to photography, sculpture, installation, video and “transgressive performance art”, psychosexual events intended to fly in the face of social convention, testing the emotional limits of both artist and viewer. McCarthy’s work was brought to international attention in 1992 with the exhibition Helter Skelter at the Museum of Contemporary Art – MoCA, Los Angeles. Since then, it has been part of group shows and festivals all over the world. Recent solo exhibitions were held, among others, at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands (2004), the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo in Málaga, Spain (2004), at the Tate Modern in London (2003), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (2000), and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (2000). Paul McCarthy is represented by Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois in Paris and Hauser & Wirth (London, New York, Zürich).
