MERLIN CARPENTER, Midcareer Paintings
exhibition view at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2015
image © we find wildness

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MERLIN CARPENTER, Midcareer Paintings
exhibition view at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2015
image © we find wildness

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MERLIN CARPENTER, Midcareer Paintings
exhibition view at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2015
image © we find wildness

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MERLIN CARPENTER, Midcareer Paintings
exhibition view at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2015
image © we find wildness

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MERLIN CARPENTER, Midcareer Paintings
exhibition view at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2015
image © we find wildness

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MERLIN CARPENTER, Midcareer Paintings
exhibition view at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2015
image © we find wildness

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MERLIN CARPENTER, Midcareer Paintings
exhibition view at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2015
image © we find wildness

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Courtesy MD 72, Berlin, 2016 (detail)
transit blanket on stretcher frame, 234 x 198, 5 cm
NOT FOR SALE
image © we find wildness

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Courtesy MD 72, Berlin, 2016
transit blanket on stretcher frame, 234 x 198, 5 cm
NOT FOR SALE
image © we find wildness

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MERLIN CARPENTER, Midcareer Paintings
exhibition view at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2015
image © we find wildness

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MERLIN CARPENTER, Midcareer Paintings
exhibition view at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2015
image © we find wildness

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Courtesy Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York, 2016
transit blanket on stretcher frame, 234 x 198, 5 cm
NOT FOR SALE
image © we find wildness

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Courtesy Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York, 2016 (detail)
transit blanket on stretcher frame, 234 x 198, 5 cm
NOT FOR SALE
image © we find wildness

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MERLIN CARPENTER, Midcareer Paintings
exhibition view at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2015
image © we find wildness

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Midcareer Paintings is a solo exhibition by American artist MERLIN CARPENTER that is currently on view at Kunsthalle Bern. Midcareer Paintings consists of twenty-two wall works made with thick blankets used to protect artworks during transports. Every piece has exactly the same size – 234 x 198,5 cm -, and a label which indicates an hypothetical date of production – 2016 -, the courtesy of a gallery with whom CARPENTER is working, as well as a notation ‘NOT FOR SALE’.

But what does a midcareer exhibition mean? The midcareer survey is a kind of ‘rite of passage’ for a living artist at a key moment in his or her career and offers a unique vantage point of looking back and looking forward in the frame of an institution. For this exhibition as well as his previous presentations, CARPENTER takes the rules of the art game and plays with them freely as if they were solid materials.

Eventually the Kunsthalle of Bern is presenting a painting show without painting although the pieces have pictorial quality, a midcareer exhibition with works dated in the future, as well as an artist who seems to refuse selling his work despite the fact that it already belongs to galleries. The result can be seen as an ironical, provocative and institutional critique to painting, to institutions but also to the art scene in general. Nevertheless Midcareer Paintings is rather a truly honest and funny exhibition; Honest, because what you see is what you get and this is applicable as much for the viewers who are not involved in the art world as for the lead figures such as galleries, collectors, and directors. And funny because; aren’t the best comedies the ones that dig at the truth?

➝ Midcareer Paintings by MERLIN CARPENTER is on view at Kunsthalle Bern until November 1, 2015.

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