Everything You Need to Know About Paul McCarthy's New Exhibition at Park Avenue Armory

Image via Complex Original

McCarthy's exhibition is a huge multimedia spectacle.

WS incorporates sculpture, sets, sound, and video into a mammoth show. A culmination of multiple themes McCarthy has developed throughout his career as an artist, this show is the artist's largest and most ambitious project ever. The exhibition features an 8,800-square foot forest sculpture with 30-foot brown plastic-foam trees that sway 20 feet into the air. There are also colorful, enormous flowers across the landscape. Check out the time-lapse video below of the show's being constructed.

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The show will, without a doubt, be provocative. Don't bring the kids.

By this point, you've probably hear that WS is not for all audiences. McCarthy is known for revealing American icons as grotesque, overly sexualized figures. In WS, he again plays on the malevolence of culture, commenting on consumerism and popular iconography with overly suggestive content. Because of the nature of McCarthy's controversial works, the Armory advises that visitors should be at least 17-years-old. 

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WS, which stands for “White Snow,” contains a lot of imagery from Snow White, except nothing is PG about it.

WS is derived from the Snow White fairytale, but it's not one to tell the kids. In what seem like never-ending videos shot in L.A. last year, three Snow Whites run around a house with a group of drunk dudes who look like full-grown versions of the seven dwarfs whose "Beer, blood, bodily fluids, and genitals fly about the scene freely." This all takes place during an orgiastic dinner party, where we witness pants-less dwarfs preying on bare-breasted Snow Whites as well as the grossest way to eat a chicken leg ever. 

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It's kind of awkward that McCarthy's son helped him create the show, right?

Some fathers bond with their sons over football games. Paul McCarthy bonds with his son while creating perverted fairytale installations. “I think we broke the typical father-son relationship at some point,” the artist's son Damon told The New York Times. Apparently Damon also helped his father home-brew beer for a mechanical sculpture Bavarian Kick at the tender age of six. 

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The forest in WS hides a house that is a replica of the McCarthy childhood home.

Like all scary forests from childhood stories, in WS, there sits an ostensibly charming cottage. Like the candy house in Hansel and Gretel, what's inside is not so sweet. In WS, McCarthy installed a version of his childhood ranch abode, located in Salt Lake City. While we only see the house from the outside while in the forest, in another section of the installation, we get to peep into rooms ravished by who we assume were the dinner party guests in McCarthy's films.

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WS is still a work in progress.

After the exhibition comes to a close, McCarthy's installation will make its way back to Los Angeles, where the artist lives and works. The project will grow and evolve, possibly for many years in the future. We have a feeling this isn't the last time the work will be shown, and we can't wait for next time. 

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Hauser & Wirth is hosting four separate Manhattan exhibitions to coincide with the show.

Hauser & Wirth Gallery announced that its whole spring program in NYC will be devoted to Paul McCarthy, including three shows and an outdoor sculpture. "Life Casts" includes sculptures that look so real it's creepy. Just in case you don't get your fill with the Armory exhibition, you will be able to enjoy more of his "bacchanalian chaos, and tragicomic narratives that connect seemingly disparate bodies of work."  

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McCarthy isn't slowing down anytime soon.

Despite this blockbuster exhibit, McCarthy hasn't hit the breaks. Recently he bought 1,000 acres of land in northern Los Angeles to recreate a town from the Old West. He hopes to film a series of dark westerns — and we bet they won't be your typical cowboy vs. Indians flicks — further extending his B-movie studio. Paul Schimmel, a former chief curator at MOCA and a longtime McCarthy fan, told The New York Times, “The thing about Paul — and it comes partly from so many years of lack of success — is that he is willing to bet absolutely everything, put the entire pot on the table and double down and say, ‘I’m going to push this to the brink.'"

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