PAUL MCCARTHY – A&E, Adolf & Eva, Adam & Eve, in the Garden of Eden, Picnic, Mix 2LP

Double Vinyl LP, fullcolour gatefold sleeve, fullcolour innersleeves. Edition of 400 copies.

A&E IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN, PICNIC is the first chapter in Paul McCarthy’s A&E video project. Paul McCarthy and Lilith Stangenberg performed PICNIC three times on August 2, 3, and 4, 2021, in the lower Sierra Mountains of California. This 2LP set, A&E, ADOLF & EVA, ADAM & EVE, IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN, PICNIC, MIX is roughly 80 minutes each of day 1, day 2, and day 3, merged.

Produced and Distributed by Daniel Löwenbrück / Tochnit Aleph, Photography by Alex Stevens, Sound Design by Alex Stevens & Paul McCarthy, Graphic Design by Paul McCarthy & Sid M. Duenas

All images 2024 © Paul McCarthy

“Paul McCarthy is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artists. Born in 1945, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he first established a multi-faceted artistic practice, which sought to break the limitations of painting by using unorthodox materials such as bodily fluids and food. He has since become known for visceral, often hauntingly humorous work in a variety of mediums—from performance, photography, film and video, to sculpture, drawing and painting.

During the 1990s, he extended his practice into installations and stand-alone sculptural figures, utilizing a range of materials such as fiberglass, silicone, animatronics and inflatable vinyl. Playing on popular illusions and cultural myths, fantasy and reality collide in a delirious yet poignant exploration of the subconscious, in works that simultaneously challenge the viewer’s phenomenological expectations.

Whether absent or present, the human figure has been a constant in his work, either through the artist‘s own performances or the array of characters he creates to mix high and low culture, and provoke an analysis of our fundamental beliefs. These playfully oversized characters and objects critique the worlds from which they are drawn: Hollywood, politics, philosophy, science, art, literature, and television. McCarthy’s work, thus, locates the traumas lurking behind the stage set of the American Dream and identifies their counterparts in the art historical canon.”

– Hauser & Wirth