An Evening with Paul McCarthy: A&E, Adolf & Eva / Adam & Eve

ABOUT THE FILMS:

NPP1P2, WAR PIG, Drawing Session, 2CH, Paul McCarthy, 2025
Screen captures from AI affected video performance, 2 channel 16:9 color video w/ sound, duration: 16:50 min

An animated image flow of the absurd actions of male tyrants. Images of the world of male madness. The performance of drawing while in character was video recorded then later processed two separate times in collaboration with the machine, altering the range between the video recording of the performance and the written prompt – increasing and decreasing the hallucination.

© Paul McCarthy. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

A&E, Adolf & Eva / Adam & Eve, Cooking Show, Kitchen, Paul McCarthy with Lilith Stangenberg, 2022/2023
Video performance stills, 16:9 color video w/ sound, duration: 1hr 47:14 min

Adolf Adam and Eva Eve make soup and talk to the camera while drinking Champagne. Adolf Adam is the American fat pig-artist and Eva Eve is the German actress, daughter, pretend Marilyn. Fun and games in the kitchen, on the floor, a love-frolic on the slippery kitchen counter, ending with Eva Eve’s sick head in the soup pot.

© Paul McCarthy. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photos: Alex Stevens.

A&E, Adolf & Eva / Adam & Eve, Mother, Paul McCarthy with Lilith Stangenberg, 2022/2025
Video performance stills, 16:9 color video w/ sound, duration: 45:26min

Adolf Adam and Eva Eve are under a dead pine tree. Eva Eve’s back is against the tree. Adolf Adam lays on the ground, his head in her lap. Adolf Adam is the buffoon boy child. Eva Eve is the mother. She feeds him with her mouth like a bird.  She leaves him in the dirt.

© Paul McCarthy. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photos: Alex Stevens.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

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, utilizing a range of materials.  Playing on popular illusions and cultural myths, fantasy and reality collide in a delirious yet poignant exploration of the subconscious in works that challenge the viewer’s phenomenological expectations.

His subversive works create a dynamic mix of high and low culture to provoke an analysis of our fundamental beliefs. His 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.

Never before has this trauma been so keenly enacted than within McCarthy’s new transgressive ‘A&E’ performance films, Cooking Show Kitchen and Mother, a fearless collaboration between Lilith Stangenberg, the renowned award-winning German stage and film actress, who plays ‘Eva’ and Paul who plays her ‘Adolf.’