Paul McCarthy Exhibition at Fundación Gaspar

Regarded as one of the most influential US artists in recent years, Paul McCarthy (1945, Salt Lake City, Utah) exhibits his paintings and drawings at the Fundación Gaspar until July 16, 2017. He approaches his work through a variety of artistic disciplines like sculpture, performance, and video, among others. Titled "WS & CSSC, Paintings and Drawings," the exhibition consists of 13 large-scale paintings and 31 drawings that are part of two ongoing monumental projects developed through a multidisciplinary practice: "White Snow" and "Stagecoach." In both series, he sets archetypical US narratives against human impulses and desires examined with irony and the subversive approach that characterizes McCarthy's work. Fueled by his own improvisational approach, scatological performative practices are presented on canvas with a distinctly gestural style based on experimentation with materials and psychological processes. The use of collage combines seemingly unconnected referents like pages torn from fashion magazines, images found online, and three-dimensional objects like a coffee table. In these works, McCarthy masterfully combines the history of painting with contemporary motifs, through dramatic scenes that expose latent desires and exploit uncomfortable spaces where childhood innocence becomes part of the awareness of adults. In an article about the exhibition featured in El País periodical, José Ángel Montañés writes: "Iconoclastic, anti-myths, scatological, and an artist who considers himself a drawer first and foremost, for McCarthy nothing is out-of-bounds." In the "Stagecoach" series still under development, "the works can change from one day to the next. There, this artist criticizes the "fake appearance of Hollywood film stars." This is the reason why one can identify in his work actors like Brad Pitt, Robert Duval, Julia Roberts, or Russell Crowe in highly compromising sexual acts. And, if they are not recognizable, then their faces are clipped from magazine images and placed on the canvas in collage-like pieces that also include a large number of images taken from explicit pornographic magazines, reinforcing in this manner a provocative nature whose importance this artist actually downplays."