Carter Exhibitions and Paintings at Saatchi-gallery

Carter lives and works in New York. Carter’s works – usually photographic collages or dense, layered, ink drawings – are a form of deflected (or defective) self-portraiture. Carter’s works on paper are assembled – in a manner akin to a police “Identikit” image, or a “Mr. Potato Head” figure – from pre- drawn fragments that depict bodily parts and facial characteristics (profiles, hair styles, moustaches, beards, noses, ears, mouths, eyes, etc.), and invariably make reference to the artist’s own physiognomy. As in his photographic collages – in which two images, typically Polaroid or passport-style portraits of the artist are literally juxtaposed 1 on leading of yet another: with details from 1 image ‘infecting’ or ‘corrupting’ the other – Carter’s drawing seek to obscure, or confuse, notions of self-identity (and identification).

Like Arnulf Rainer’s psychologically charged, modified photographic self-portraits, Carter’s visceral work presents human identity (and sexuality) as kind of mask: a series of options, or variables, that not only reveal our culture’s fascination for body augmentation (e.g. TV’s ‘Nip/Tuck’) but also reveal our profound unease with the body. Carter’s work references a time when these “options” weren’t possibilities, but rather necessities in the construction of the closet, as in Rock Hudson’s 1966 film, “Seconds.” There, plastic surgery transforms Hudson’s character from straight-laced, Manhattanite businessman into an artist living in Malibu, CA. The new Rock is an idealized portrait, cobbled together from disparate, altered parts. It is this kind of dissemblance that is referenced in Carter’s collaged drawings and Polaroids.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2005

• Hotel Gallery, London

• White Room, White Columns, New York, NY

2004

• Carter, Drawings and Polaroids, Richard Dadd Gallery, St. Paul

2000

• Conversation Piece, Southern Exposure, San Francisco

1999

• Bring in the Actual Photo, Four Walls Gallery, San Francisco

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2000

• Faculty 2000, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore

• The Future of the Body, Richmond Art Center, Oakland

1998

• All of Me, New Langton Arts, San Francisco

• SAP: The Residue of the San Francisco Art Scene, Lanai Motel/Four Walls Gallery, SF, CA

• Covert Pleasures, New Langton Arts, San Francisco

• Spoon Full of Sugar, Southern Exposure, San Francisco

1997

• Introductions, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco

• New Work, Four Walls Gallery, San Francisco

• Deep Forest, Four Walls, San Francisco

1995

• Big Bundle of Joy, Pence Gallery, Davis

1994

• Skowhegan Annual Exhibition

1992

• Word and Image, Bauhouse Gallery, Baltimore

1990

• Miniature Art, Art Gallery of Fell’s Point, Baltimore

Conclusions:

Carter uses abstracted drawing as a means of investigation into the shifting concepts of the human body and personal identity. In Untitled, Carter presets a diptych of two rivalling fields of blob-like specimens, every self-contained like Petri dishes nurturing biological mutation. Utilizing his own features as a control for experimentation, Carter’s two panels show subtle variations of the identical forms, his abject and non-descript shapes converge as a catalogue of physical possibilities: eyes, lips, noses, and hairstyles float as disembodied samples for facial alteration, while geometric patterns clinically emerge as cell structures, globular tissue, or rough landscapes ripe for cultivation.

What to Do Next…

If you want any data about Carter or searching for his paintings please pay a visit to us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/carter.htm