Common Ruin
Win McCarthy

“In my best efforts to explore the personal, the intimate, the interior, I often found myself instead in the realm of the hollow, the superficial, and the masked.” So begins Common Ruin, a book of writings by artist Win McCarthy. Published in parallel with the artist’s solo exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, critical texts, personal reflections, material histories, and poetry are paired with artworks and studio views. At once wavering and lucid, McCarthy’s writing explores the tensions between interiority and exteriority, complexity and simplicity, friend and stranger, city and citizen. Common Ruin unfolds an impossible dialogue with persistence and humility—and the fragility that his work embodies.

Common Ruin is co-published by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.