Artists Space

Win McCarthy: Common Ruin

Reading
May 25, 2023, 7pm

Scanned image of a white page featuring a geometric drawing of a building divided into squares. Some of the squares are colored in charcoal and others are lightly filled in with pencil. Light smudges of black charcoal appear across the page. In the upper-center of the page, text reads: "Win McCarthy / Common Ruin".
Cover of Common Ruin, Win McCarthy, 2023. [Scanned image of a white page featuring a geometric drawing of a building divided into squares. Some of the squares are colored in charcoal and others are lightly filled in with pencil. Light smudges of black charcoal appear across the page. In the upper-center of the page, text reads: "Win McCarthy / Common Ruin".]

Artists Space is pleased to present a reading with artist Win McCarthy to celebrate the release of his first book Common Ruin. Published in parallel with the artist’s solo exhibition Innenportrait, recently on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, critical texts, personal reflections, material histories, and poetry are paired with images of artworks and views from his studio. 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. As he states, “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.”

Paperback, 192 pages, 228mm x 152mm, 2023. ISBN: 9783753303789. Published by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König. The book will be on sale at the event for $25.

Win McCarthy (b. 1986, New York, US) lives and works in New York. He completed his BA at Bard College, US (2008). Recent solo exhibitions include KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE (2023); Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, NL (2022); Galerie Neu, Berlin, DE (2021); Svetlana, New York, US (2019); Silberkuppe, Berlin, DE (2017); and Off Vendome, New York, US (2015). Recent group exhibitions have been held at Swiss Institute, New York, US (2022); Drawing Center, NY, US (2020); SMART Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Chicago, US (2019); Kunsthal, Rotterdam, NL (2019); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, US (2016); and Sculpture Center, New York, US (2014).

Support for Artists Space’s exhibitions and programs is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Cy Twombly Foundation, The Teiger Foundation, The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, Imperfect Family Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Willem de Kooning Foundation, The Fox Aarons Foundation, Herman Goldman Foundation, The Destina Foundation, The Luce Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Arison Arts Foundation, The David Rockefeller Fund, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, The Jill and Peter Kraus Foundation, The Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation.