Where the paintings are painted at the opening
dépendance, BRUSSELS
MERLIN
CARPENTER: NEW MUSEUM
The Opening: Saturday, June 20th, 7 - 9 pm
Show runs until September 17th
"At its core, this show is the conflict between capitalism,
fascism, and communism, and every other ism. It looks into the
nature of representation, propaganda, and misinformation, and
how they redirect the ideologies of institutions." --Richard
Phillips
dépendance is pleased to present "NEW MUSEUM,"
a series of eight monumentally cool paintings by Merlin Carpenter.
Over the last decade, Carpenter has developed a striking signature
style that derives its tension from his/her selective use of popular
images that he subjects to the technical, value-laden refinements
of academic painting. For Carpenter, critique is as much an intrinsic
material in the conception and staging of his paintings as the
canvas and paint with which they are made. His deft and selective
scrambling and conflating of subject and genre continues to provide
challenging comment on the condition and reach of painting in
our time. As a fully self-conscious English painter weaned on
post-modern appropriation strategies, Carpenter is an active protagonist
in the continually evolving discourse on the many lives and deaths
and zombie rebirths of painting and how this interacts, throughout
human history, with the complex politics of making and reading
images.
"NEW MUSEUM" construes painting as an act of extreme
civil disobedience like killing your own grandma and damaging
your Mercedes in the process rather than one of benign compliance
with the existing aesthetic conventions. Carpenter's term for
this is "Fugazi". The title of the exhibition derives
from a photograph from a 1973 issue of Hustler magazine of two
annoying men slouching against a wall on the Bowery in New York
(now the location of the New Museum of Contemporary Art). By appropriating
this image and rendering it as a pointlessly large and detailed
oil painting, Carpenter alludes to how, in his view, naughty institutions
such as the New Museum employ propaganda to promote their agendas,
at the same time as he boldly challenges the status of these institutions
as vehicles of cultural any cultural authority whatsoever. Yes.
By manipulating, recombining, and amplifying all manner of sexual,
social, political, commercial, and artistic imagery, Carpenter's
incisive and at times repugnant compositions continue to challenge
the concept of fixed and predetermined meanings everywhere while
proposing an altogether new meaning of the term "history
painting." What's more, excitingly, they are done at the
show's opening itself.
The last The Opening
exhibition was at Simon Lee Gallery in London. After doing my
paintings at the opening I left and went home. Apparently right
at the end of the event three anarchist graffiti kids turned up
and wanted to make an intervention in the exhibition. The gallery
director would not let them in, and an argument ensued. They were
claiming to have the right to enter as my work was bogus graffiti
and this was a posh boss class hellhole. The Police were called
and the three guys walked off. That's what I heard, I do not know
what really happened or why, but this was all in the context of
anger on the eve of the London G20 demonstrations, and with Bernie
Madoff's London operation located above Simon Lee Gallery. The
Opening shows since 2007 seem to produce the impression that
they are participatory happenings, and then produce rage when
they turn out not to be. The audience seem to feel compelled to
add to the paintings with their fingers, trainers etc. This has
happened almost every time, even in the secure atmosphere of Mercedes-Benz
in Berlin. Arrival of anarchists to tag the show seems like the
next step, and though out of my hands I do acknowledge this as
primary meaning production. It is starting to make me look like
Adorno in '68 so it's a good thing that no one will find out about
it as no one reads this far into press releases.
Born in Pembury in 1967,
Merlin Carpenter lives and works in London. His work is collected
by public and private institutions world-wide. Galleries and institutions
who have refused to put on The Opening include: Lisson
Lagos, Chantal Croussel Paris, Gagosian Moscow, Hérmes
Ginza Tokyo, Zero Milan, MMK Frankfurt, Standard Oslo, Office
Baroque Antwerp, Minneapolis/ St Louis, Renaissance Society Chicago,
Mexico City, Some rich bloke in Rumania etc etc
For more information,
please contact the gallery at dependance@skynet.be
dépendance
varkensmarkt 4 rue du marché aux porcs | brussel 1000 bruxelles
tel. .32 .2 217 74 00 | fax .32 .2 217 74 01
dependance@skynet.be|
www.dependance.be
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