Entrance is excited to present Vessels of Experience, new sculpture by Pat McCarthy, his second exhibition at the gallery following Nik Nak’s City Cart in 2019, following years of collaboration with Entrance.
The four seasons are presented through the artist's experimentations at his upstate farm in the Catskill Mountains of New York. The making of sculpture, agriculture, vinification and daily chores are one and the same in Pat's practice. Pat keeps pigeons, while his wife, Maddy Ringold-Brown, tends the flower fields, together managing the orchards, vineyards, and stewarding the hardwood forest on the property. Affectionately named Nik Nak’s Farm memorializing their late and now legendary Dachshund.
Sourcing materials from the landscape, Pat crafts poetic narrative through objects which speak to the hyper-personal yet universal. A baby crib, woven from grapevines, captures the anxiety for first-time fathers to be. Hand-milled planks of black cherry and ash become a wood burning stove covered in ceramic mushrooms, a portrait of the forest’s bones and veins. Their tractors, hand-me-downs from neighboring farmers, are transmuted and represented in English porcelain. Bricolaged pigeons assembled from bottles of wine and dried fruit celebrate the terroir of the upstate environment — a rocky, wet, and cold paradise.
Served at the opening are the artist’s farm-made plant-based “oysters”, alongside home-brewed grape and fruit wines poured from handmade Porcelain jugs that are included as works in the exhibition. An oak barrel containing unfiltered Catskill mountain spring water offers a final, focused expression of place.
Vessels of Experience also features landscape paintings by Louis Somveille (b. 1994, Nancy, France). Currently living and working in Paris, Someveille’s summer painting residency on Nik Nak’s Farm captured the vistas that backdrop Pat’s artistic endeavors and farm life in Andes, New York.
