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| Public Art Fund presents pioneering Los Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy's installation The Box, a visually mind-boggling replica of the artist's entire studio inside a giant wooden crate. But there's a twist. Set at 90 degrees, McCarthy's studio-in-a-box is physically disorienting with every piece of furniture, piece of video equipment, every tool, paper or prop emerging from the right hand wall instead of the floor. In this sideways studio, the floor becomes a wall, the wall becomes the ceiling, the ceiling becomes another wall, and a wall becomes the floor. Seeing the space through the frame of one of the studio's rectangular windows, the sculpture is transformed into a monumental 3-D painting that is 20' high and stretches 50' to the rear of the room.
The outside of the sculpture is made of unfinished wood while the inside of The Box contains every one of the studio's thousands of actual objects and is complete with openings that are identical in location and size to windows and doors of the actual studio. The contents of The Box are all placed in exactly the same (seemingly chaotic) position as they were in the original studio. The nature of the box's interior, its distorted perspective, enormous length and unbelievable clutter charge the space with an obsessive, disconcerting quality.
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| Paul McCarthy is a seminal West Coast artist. He is currently a professor in the fine arts department at UCLA, who has influenced successive generations of artists.
Paul McCarthy is known for his raw, visceral work which has taken form in a wide variety of media (photography, painting, performance, sculpture, video, installation, drawing, painting) ranging in scale from monumental to intimate. Playing on illusions and cultural myths, the melding of human physicality with architecture, crossing boundaries and confounding expectations, McCarthy's work often embodies obsessive activities and challenges expected physical orientation.
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The Public Art Fund's exhibition of The Box is presented in collaboration with the New Museum of Contemporary Art's Paul McCarthy survey, February 24 through May 13, 2001.
This exhibition is made possible by The Silverweed Foundation and is presented in collaboration with the Sculpture Garden at 590 Madison which is jointly managed by Minskoff Properties and PaceWildenstein.
Paul McCarthy's The Box is courtesy of Sammlung Hauser und Wirth, St. Gallen, Switzerland.
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Paul McCarthy's The Box is located at 590 Madison Avenue (entrance on 56th Street)
Nearest Subways: E or F trains to Fifth Avenue stop (at 53rd Street)
6 train to 59th Street stop (at Lexington Avenue).
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