BOOKS
Win McCarthy - Common Ruin
2023
KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König
9783753303789
Published in parallel with the artist’s solo exhibition Innenportrait, recently on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, critical texts, personal reflections, material histories, and poetry are paired with images of artworks and views from his studio. At once wavering and lucid, McCarthy’s writing explores the tensions between interiority and exteriority, complexity and simplicity, friend and stranger, city and citizen. Common Ruin unfolds an impossible dialogue with persistence and humility—and the fragility that his work embodies. As he states, “in my best efforts to explore the personal, the intimate, the interior, I often found myself instead in the realm of the hollow, the superficial, and the masked.”