2014

MD72, Berlin

For its first participation to ART-O-RAMA, MD72 Gallery will present a solo show by Merlin Carpenter (°1967 in Pembury – lives and works in London).

The starting point of this project is Merlin Carpenter´s recent exhibition «Au Café» at the Bar de la Victoire and at the Bureau Capan-Bordes in Nice, where he exhibited a series of paintings entitled L’absinthe. The works take their inspiration from Edgar Degas´s painting L´Absinthe from 1876, triggering at the time a terrible scandal in prudish and victorian England.

A scene from the Café de la Nouvelle-Athénes is depicted in the work : the café was a meeting point for Impressionist artists living in Paris, in Montmartre more specifically.

The artist’s series was mostly produced during the summer of 2010 and 2011 during his stay in Antibes, a touristic city between Nice and Cannes. During the 1920’s, Antibes was a popular location for bohemian artists, a sort of summertime counterpart to the Parisian café-culture developed in Montmartre and Montparnasse.

L´Absinthe by Carpenter seems the ideal candidate to contextualize the location and unicity of ART-O-RAMA and more precisely the historical South of France tradition of painting and bohemia.

http://www.mehringdamm72.de

 

 

Merlin Carpenter

Exhibition view, Café de la Victoire, 2012
Courtesy Merlin Carpenter and MD72, Berlin