PAUL MCCARTHY

As one of America’s most influential and challenging artists working today, Paul McCarthy has used his unique, and at times haunting vision to investigate a broad range of themes, from psychoanalysis to popular culture. This spring, Kukje Gallery will introduce McCarthy’s sharp wit to Korean viewers through his recent exploration of the 19th century German folktale Snow White.

McCarthy has taken this classic subject and filtered it through the lens of Disney’s 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. McCarthy’s exhibition will be centered around a sculpted group of the dwarves; at turns heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, his dwarf sculptures are made in his signature style —crudely hewn and pierced fetishes of the beloved Disney characters cast in silicone. Staged as a kind of mute slapstick comedy, McCarthy’s sculptures not only comment on the Disney-fication of culture and contemporary values, but also the latent desire and forlorn love story that lies at the heart of the Snow White myth.

Born in Salt Lake City in 1945, Paul McCarthy studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and at the University of Southern California. McCarthy has had solo exhibitions in museum, galleries and festivals around the world, including Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan; De Uithof, Utrecht; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Moderna Musset, Stockholm, Whitechapel Gallery, London; and more. McCarthy is currently based in Los Angeles, California.