Fleet | Pat McCarthy
December 13, 2022
Cheese Bike, 2009–14
Puch moped, stove, cassette stereo, mixed media
approx 72" l x 30" w x 48" h
Pat McCarthy’s vehicles are more than sculptures of exquisitely remixed materials. Each is a happening with the potential to happen again. Each holds a story of strangers coming together in modes and moods lesser known. Each is a manifesto that proposes a different kind of movement in the city, not the circulation of capital and stress but something akin to the flightpath of a pigeon over Bushwick, or to a teeanger’s meandering in search of a place to be. McCarthy’s artworks as happenings address our need to connect to each other in ways not given – ways that need to be invented.
Known as Pigeon Pat for the 150+ pigeons he cares for and regularly collaborates with and as the author of the Born to Kill zines, McCarthy returns to the vehicle as a motif both aesthetic and social. CheeseBike is a Puch moped rigged to produce pigeon-egg and grilled cheese sandwiches for one dollar on the fly; Cinemateque is a mobile movie cart and pigeon coop in one; Chariot de Papier is a self-sufficient zine-making outfit in a souped-up shopping cart; MV Montauk Skidoo is a homemade plywood boat with a weedwhacker motor tandem to a surfboard pigeon coop; Niknak’s City Cart is an iterative hot dog stand created to honor the artist and his partner’s late dachshund and reconstructed according to audience sketches of New York’s buildings and contours; Pigeon Bus is a revolutionary handbag in the age of the handbag; finally, Portrait of Myself as Our Tractor is a tell-all self-portrait of the artist at work on his family farm. These machines are improvised, DIY, rag-and-bone man; they are potentials, places we could meet, for a dreamy run-in.
—Jesse Ruddock
Flights Cinematheque, 2015
porcelain, steel, bamboo, twine, denim, pigeon, kerosene lantern, digital HD cinema projector, digital copy of Flights super 8 film
45” l x 20” w x 60” h
Chariot de papier, 2016
photocopy machine, generator, car battery, stereo, cameras, steel, paper, pastis
32” l x 24” w x 82” h
McCarthy making a zine with Chariot de papier, 2016
MV Montauk Skidoo, 2018
plywood, surfboard, weed-trimmer, steel, denim, epoxy resin, paper, pigeons
118” l x 52” w x 18” h
McCarthy selling hot dogs from Niknak’s City Cart prior to its reconstruction (right), 2019
Niknak’s City Cart, 2019
stainless steel and mixed media
110” l x 70” w x 65” h
Niknak’s City Cart, 2022
porcelain, silver luster, stainless steel, plastic, copper, red oak
16” l x 9” w x 13” h
Pigeon Bus, 2022
porcelain, steel, stainless steel, hardwoods, enamel, copper, plastic
15” l x 7” w x 11” h
Portrait of Myself as Our Tractor, 2022
cardboard, wool, English porcelain, epoxy resin, tractor enamel
29" l x 10" w x 18" h
Pat McCarthy works primarily in sculpture, zine-making, and video. He received his training entirely in the field apprenticing under Tom Sachs and JJ Peet. McCarthy’s work presents poetic narratives born of deep ritualized engagement with nature, animals, and travel. Emphasis is given to public performance, democratized platforms of communication, and functional bricolage. His work is executed and exhibited in the USA and internationally. He is a member of the collectives Satan Ceramics and 8 Ball Community. His work is in the collections of MoMA, New York; Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain, Marseille; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; La Fab, Paris; and many private collections. He lives in New York City and the Catskill Mountains.
Images courtesy of the artist.
