Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

A painting reminiscent of a certain “naive primitivism,” Untitled (Colors) and Untitled (Ghost) are representative of McCarthy’s work. Upon first encounter, her abstract colorful compositions resemble somewhat formal nonrepresentational landscapes. However, a closer inspection reveals the presence of a lowbrow style that draws inspiration both from outsider and folk art traditions.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

A painting reminiscent of a certain “naive primitivism,” Untitled (the way in is the way out) is representative of McCarthy’s work. Upon first encounter, her abstract colorful compositions resemble somewhat formal nonrepresentational landscapes. However, a closer inspection reveals the presence of a lowbrow style that draws inspiration both from outsider and folk art traditions.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The title of Alicia Smith’s video work, Teomama , means “God Carrier” in the Aztec language of Nahuatl. It was the name given to medicine men and women who carried the bones of Huitzilopochtli—the god of war, sun, and human sacrifice in ancient Mexico, and the national deity of the Aztecs. Of the many legends featuring Huitzilopochtli, the origin story of Tenochtitlan (present day Mexico City) is perhaps one of the most well-known.

Textile (Textile)

Out of simple materials, Alicia Henry creates enigmatic, somewhat troubled characters, which reveal her interest in the complexities and the contradictions surrounding familial relationships. The artist probes societal differences and how these variations affect individual and group responses to themes of beauty, the body, and broader issues of identity. Untitled explores these themes and addresses the processes through which women navigate such issues.

Photography (Photography)

Olive Oil (from the Propo Series)

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Memory Mistake of the Eldridge Cleaver Pants was created for the show Paul McCarthy’s Low Life Slow Life Part 1 , held at California College of the Arts’s Wattis Institute in 2008 and curated by McCarthy himself. In homage to an influence in his early career, McCarthy attempted to reconstruct a pair of pants worn by Black Panther revolutionary Eldridge Cleaver in a picture that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s. But in the process, McCarthy misremembered their original design of the pants, which had black outer panels and white inner panels in white, and left a black shape highlighted in the crotch area.

Photography (Photography)

McCarthy’s Mother Pig performance at Shushi Gallery in 1983 was the first time he used a set, a practice which came to characterize his later works. Here, McCarthy squirts liquid out of a bottle held near his crotch onto a stuffed animal in the shape of a lion. The costuming, materials, and simulated bodily functions frequently appear in McCarthy’s work, which often disturbingly juxtaposes visceral and startling manipulation of the body with the cheerful artifacts of popular consumer culture.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

To make Mickey Mouse (2010), Paul McCarthy altered a found photograph—not of the iconic cartoon, but of a man costumed as Mickey. On his shoulders he supports an enormous false head, Mickey’s familiar face grinning with glossy eyes. The artist has marked out in heavy black the background of Cinderella’s castle.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Sideways Time by Olivia Erlanger is the result of the artist’s interest in networks, seen and unseen, financial and ecological, the collapse of which has resulted in the fracturing of a middle class American identity. Consumption and the construction of value are a frequent concern of her sculptures that explore the structural friction between a public and private. Erlanger looks to the architecture that connects these systems for inspiration and in this sense, the language of scaffoldings, foundations and facades that percolate throughout her work.

Painting (Painting)

In her geometric paintings on wood panel, Madriz employs the Fibonacci numbers to illustrate, in simplified form, the pattern of natural plant growth—beginning from a single stem, and growing exponentially, rationally, and efficiently outward from there. Tinting the underlying wood but not covering it, Madriz’s delicate cubes seem to hover on the surface of the warm wood surfaces, drawing more attention to the grain and its own natural pattern. Always drawing the attention back to the natural world, Madriz’s multimedia works aim to reassert the natural, and our own links to it.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

For her work in Sharjah Biennial 14, Alia Farid traveled from the United Arab Emirates to Iran across the Strait of Hormuz to film the longest day of the summer. On Qeshm Island, where her film is set, the summer solstice is referred to as Nowruz Al Sayadeen (Farsi for “fishermen’s new year”). The work foregrounds a number of local residents whose performances draw attention to their material surroundings and natural environment–– from a brightly decorated domestic interior to an expansive sea view overlooking the Arabian Gulf.