“Commonplacing”, Patrick Carroll’s first solo exhibition in New York, presents texts that explore the poetic and political tensions between language, culture and visibility. Each concept work features an intricately knit panel adorned with individual words or phrases, stretched around a wooden frame. Their geometric austerity is admittedly minimalist, as the texts are enclosed in a singular block of powerful color. The tonal variations allow his “statements” to shine in brilliant contrast with their mesh-like supports or whisper softly to the viewer. These backgrounds produce a transparency that invites the frame, staples and screws to play a part in the delicate whole of each work. This quality of porosity allows his compositions to retain both a declarative palpability and a graceful semi-presence.
Carroll’s poignant textual selections, composed of direct quotes or self-devised idioms, are marked by a lyrical openness. They thematize the desire and disavowal of readability, often in relation to gay cultural forms. In homocannon (all works 2023), the word APOCRYPHA, which refers to written records of questionable veracity, is rendered with rainbow striped lettering. Using the term as a metaphor, Carroll’s playful Pride coloring induces a celebratory effect, honoring the often esoteric alternative history of gay life while highlighting the tragedy of exclusion. The room Bona Nochy reads “POLARI UNIVERSITY”, a reference to secret Polari street slang, once spoken by homosexuals and other social offenders to escape the law and heterosexual society. Carroll highlights the generative possibilities of linguistic obscurity within the group with his high camp suggestion for a school of cant.
Analogously, the permeability of the meshes mimics the incompleteness of all language as expression – the way in which a system of representation can never fully articulate the ‘thing’ itself. But via queer culture, Carroll fashions representation into a tool, to be realized, as shown in the book Machinea RELEASE FROM THE SERVICE.
