Clive McCarthy: The Continuation of Painting by Other Means

A selection of seven works, presented on screens, will highlight McCarthy’s generative, moving image pieces, created from custom software specifically developed by the artist himself. The curation of McCarthy’s works emphasizes the artist’s interest in the human figure in motion, as revealed by an endless accumulation of computer-coded brushstrokes. Progressively revealing the phases of his subject’s movement, McCarthy’s code layers “paint” in an infinite and random sequence. A nod to a famed quote by Carl von Clausewitz, “[war] is the continuation of [policy] by other means,” the exhibition’s title extends this principle to the art world, and represents McCarthy’s own rebuttal to the timeless cycle of ominous declarations by the critical elite that “painting is dead.” On the contrary, McCarthy views painting as a vital, dynamic medium for art making in the age of technology, and poses his oeuvre as supporting evidence for its relevance and capacity to adapt to contemporary social and cultural concerns. Situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, A Continuation of Painting by Other Means is Qualia’s first-ever exhibition of screen-based, generative artworks. Gallery Co-Founder and Director Dacia Xu’s background in Materials Science and Engineering closely mirrors McCarthy’s path from the semiconductor industry to the art world. McCarthy, an established artist in the Bay Area art and technology scene, will usher in a new curatorial focus on generative and technologically-engaged practices in the gallery’s program.