Paul McCarthy
        Paul McCarthy was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1945, and he currently lives in Los Angeles, California. Among his numerous performances and group exhibitions, his solo exhibitions include Paul McCarthy, The Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; Paul McCarthy, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Paul McCarthy The Garden [1991-1992], Deitch Projects, New York; Paul McCarthy, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Tokyo Santa•Santa’s Trees, Blum and Poe, Santa Monica; Dimensions of the Mind, Sammlung Hauser and Wirth, St. Gallen; and Photographs-Performance Photographs and Video, 1969- 1983, Luhring Augustine, New York.
        Although he was trained as a painter, McCarthy began experimenting with film in 1967 and produced a large number of photographs through the late 1960s and early 1970s. His work often holds up a mirror to a range of taboos ignored by American popular culture through the use of the body as a repository of society's fears, obsessions, and conflicts. McCarthy engages in the social critique through outrageous theatricality and a violent landscape of dysfunction and trauma.