Naples • Lawrence Carroll is on stage at Madre
On display 80 works created during his 30-year career
The Madre museum is hosting the first major Lawrence Carroll retrospective since his death in 2019. On display until the 5th of September are 80 works created during the Melbourne-based artist's 3-decade career.
Carroll moved to New York in 1984 to work as a graphic designer and illustrator and began experimenting with painting by interpreting it in his own way. He immediately proves to be an unusual painter who isn’t part of any specific movement. He meets the protagonists of pop art, minimal art and new dada and manages to capture their essence by veering toward a reset painting.
IN THE EXHIBIT EACH WORK RECALLS
THE ONE NEXT TO IT AND SUGGESTS NEW CONNECTIONS.
One could say that Lawrence Carroll is white, just as Klein is blue and Kapoor is black. In the exhibition curated by Gianfranco Maraniello we perceive the austerity and at the same time the candor of a style that investigates the very tools of painting. Had he been born in Italy we would have called him an “analytical painter,” but as the citizen of the world that he is, we leave it to him to define his work. “In my painting the forms are always changing, their very placement in space changes, this restlessness of thought and spirit is what in a way makes my works alive and keeps them moving.” Carroll looks up to artists who anticipated him
in similar pursuits. Objects, media, compositional strategies and formal organizations on the one hand are not theoretical novelties; on the other hand, they demonstrate his ability to metabolize and reformulate twentieth-century languages to the point of emerging with his own identity.
"THIS RESTLESSNESS OF THOUGHT AND SPIRIT IS WHAT
IN A WAY MAKES MY WORKS ALIVE AND KEEPS THEM MOVING"
One can sense in the use of raw fabrics the echo of Alberto Burri and Jannis Kounellis and that of Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg in the use of white and sign. The arrangement does not follow a thematic or chronological order, but an elective one, which Aby Warburg would have called “of good neighborliness. “Each work recalls the one next to it, and the environment suggests new connections. In first place we find the works and the emotional relationship with the viewer. Maraniello says, “Putting together a Lawrence Carroll exhibition today means remaining faithful to his restlessness, corresponding to the vitality of works that continue to search for their place to live by questioning the unending possibilities of painting.”
Lawrence Carroll
Naples
Museo Madre
Curated by Gianfranco Maraniello
Until the 5/09
