Drake Carr

Dear Reader,

In the Netherlands, it is a longstanding tradition to appoint a stadsdichter: a poet immersed in the civic life of a city for a full year, tasked with writing about it as it happens. Not just the inaugurations and official speeches, but also the broken escalators, overheard gossip, gray Tuesdays, the hiccups, and sudden flashes of beauty. For our 40th anniversary, we will attempt something similar.

Enter Drake Carr, an artist whose work observes how social worlds, places, and moments can be captured, recorded, and translated into drawing. For his first institutional exhibition in Europe, titled House, he takes up residence at the Grazer Kunstverein, bringing his ongoing practice of portraiture into the institution’s orbit. For six consecutive weeks, Carr invites artists, team members, new acquaintances, and visitors—the changing cast of characters through which the institution forms itself—to sit for him, in an effort to create a portrait of the institution.

The image that will emerge will not be neutral, nor will it be complete. This is precisely the point. What we will get to see is a snapshot: the Grazer Kunstverein refracted through Carr’s attentive eye to the interpersonal.

In order to facilitate these portraits, Carr has constructed a series of elaborate interior sets within the gallery. The attention to décor and staging carries a distinctly camp sensibility. In this, Carr follows in the footsteps of artists such as Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Jean Cocteau—or, closer to home, the ornamental intelligence of Dagobert Peche. Each set is designed to evoke a sense of domestic space, places of comfort and self-expression, while also functioning as stages for the encounters that might take place within them. Like in other projects, here again, Carr collaborates with his mother, Wendy Carr, who runs an interior design studio based in her home, where Drake grew up. When your home is on display, every room is a stage. Of course, exhibition spaces too can trigger a similar kind of self-awareness. Carr’s sets in Graz somewhat counter this: they provide a framework that eases the discomfort of sitting for a portrait in public, while simultaneously heightening the drama of the act.

In these playful environments, the Kunstverein—at 40—is momentarily caught in the act of being itself, slightly overdressed, beautifully lit, a little self-aware, and entirely alive.

Schubert Kino
Mehlplatz 2, 8010 Graz
www.schubertkino.at
+43 (0) 316 82 90 81
info@schubertkino.at
Haltestelle Hauptplatz: Straßenbahnlinie 1,3,4,5,6,7,14