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Paul Dreaming, Vertical, Horizontal
Paul McCarthy American
Not on view
McCarthy explores the potential of the surrogate figure—an inanimate object with human characteristics—as a means of visualizing subjective experience and confronting mortality. Cast from the artist’s standing body (as evidenced by the figure’s flat feet and straight back) in 2005 and intended as a prop for one of his films, the figure went unused until 2012, when McCarthy decided to partially clothe and recline it on a padded lawn chair. By contrasting the seeming vitality of a vertical (grounded) body with the ambiguity of a horizontal one, the scene becomes one imaginable in a backyard setting, where the figure may be sleeping or in an unconscious state.
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