Caribbean Pirates, 2001-05. - Paul McCarthy (S.M.A.K.)
Régine Debatty, Paul McCarthy at the S.M.A.K.:
“Last week i visited the Paul McCarthy exhibition at the S.M.A.K. in Ghent (Belgium.) I knew little of his work, all i had seen before was his Santa merrily carrying a buttplug outside the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam. Then i heard about the Ghent exhibition, saw the images in the press kit, learnt that it featured a mechanical pig, a rabbit with a 12-metre long rubber penis, some fierce-looking pirates, image of Osama bin Laden wearing a Guggenheim turban, etc so i thought; “Yesss, this is going to be a nice & easy & fun little exhibition”.
(…)
It’s nothing of the kind. At all! The Head Shop / Shop Head exhibition is rough, abject, violent, it grabs you by the guts, hovers between bad Hollywood slapstick and the restroom, it’s a carnival of the vile and filthy but it is fascinating and mind-blowing. In fact, it must be one of the best exhibitions i’ve seen this year (together with History Will Repeat Itself (Part 1 and 2) which is currently running at the KW in Berlin.)”
