Curator: Krist Gruijthuijsen
Assistant Curator: Léon Kruijswijk
Curatorial Assistant: Linda Franken

Innenportrait

Win McCarthy

On closer inspection, there was simply no edge to the photograph at all. Instead, there was only a constantly expanding field of inclusion. It just kept going and going. The more you looked, the more detail was available. Its panorama was so immense, so total, that everything was pictured. Its focal point was infinite. Periphery and center were one. There was no emphasis, only peace, and with that, a resounding unity. There was no depth of field whatsoever, just simultaneous resolution. Each color was also another, distinct yet interchangeable. And all relational possibilities existed simultaneously. Large was also small. Wide was also narrow. Full was also empty. And yet these collapsed dualities had a groundedness about them. They felt natural, true to themselves, even, earthy. Since, yes, it was a landscape in some sense. It had to be, with all it contained. And there were individuals of every order and their infinite copies, but they were the same. Facade was the same as substrate. The most basic shapes, the building blocks, were no different than their wildest, most exaggerated embellishments. Yet, strange as it may sound, we saw all this with no feeling because, more strangely, nothing in this photograph, in all its infinite dimensionality, had any meaning associated with it. There was no possibility of recognition. No naming. Just supreme opticality, all therein touched by an exactly equal amount of light and shade. And stranger still, we, too, who were looking, we were included, and we were as seamlessly dispersed as all the rest. And we saw as one, and as another. No one was. Sight was diffused. Eyes were pictured but never looked through. There was no mind at all. But this had to be the case, because there was no distinction. All the ways of understanding that we had developed, all the devices, the modes, these were all superfluous. They were on view, of course, but they were of no utility. There was no use at all, only being. And all we had wondered about, whether it was all so simple or so infinitely complex, whether a line could exist without two points, whether, whether, whether. The answer was always “of course.” True was false. All was at once. And our feet were no different than the floor, and it went on and on, on and on like this, the unity, the oneness, the peace, on and on and on, but it didn’t mean there was no reason to look, or not to look. This was a photograph.

Artist bio

Win McCarthy (b. 1986, US) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His practice includes installation, photography, and sculpture, and is often accompanied by an extensive writing process. McCarthy has presented solo exhibitions at Galerie Neu, Berlin (2021), at Atlantis, Marseille, and Svetlana, New York (both 2019), Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam (2018), Silberkuppe, Berlin (2017), and Off Vendome, Düsseldorf (2013). He furthermore participated in a number of group shows, among them I think I Look More like the Chrysler Building at Vleeshal, Middelburg (2021), Haunted Haus, Swiss Institute, New York (2020), Trouble in Paradise. Collection Rattan Chadha, Kunsthal Rotterdam (2019), Mirror Cells, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016), Takashi Murakami’s Superflat, Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama (2016), and Puddle, pothole, porthole, SculptureCenter, New York (2014).

Colophon

Curator: Krist Gruijthuijsen

Assistant Curator: Léon Kruijswijk

Curatorial Assistant: Linda Franken

Head of Production: Claire Spilker

Technical Management: Wilken Schade

Head of Installation, Media Technology: Markus Krieger

Installation Team: KW Installation Team

Registrar: Monika Grzymislawska

Assistant Registrar: Carlotta Gonindard Liebe

Education and Art Mediation: Laura Hummernbrum, Alexia Manzano

Public Program and Outreach: Nikolas Brummer

Press and Communication: Anna Falck-Ytter, Marie Kube

Text and Editing: Win McCarthy

Translation and Copy-Edit: Hans Georg Hiller von Gaertringen, Sabine Weier

Academic Traineeship: Lara Scherrieble

Interns: Marie Hütter, Janika Jähnisch, Gina Ruhlandt, Antoine Schalk, Carla Veit