Paul McCarthy: Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement, Three Installations, Two Films

Chrissie Iles, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, discusses Paul McCarthy: Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement. This exhibition brings together a group of new and rarely seen works by Paul McCarthy (b. 1945), one of the most important American artists of his generation. The installations, films, photographs, and drawings on view focus on a central element of McCarthy's practice: the way the body is destabilized through dislocations of architectural space. The disorientation that threads though all of the works shown here is at once formal, corporeal, and psychological. The screens, projectors, and rotating cameras of Spinning Room place the viewer at the center of hypnotic environment whereas the moving walls and doors of Bang Bang Room collapse our notion of stable architectural space. In Madhouse the walls and chair spinning at varying speeds conjure a similar state of physical and mental disorientation.