Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1534561
We've been obsessed with Patty Carroll's constructed feminist photographs since seeing her first monograph in 2017. This spring, Catherine Couturier Gallery brings the Chicago-based artist to town for her third Houston solo show, "Demise and Debacle," which presents 20 images from the artist's ongoing Anonymous Women narrative. The photographic vignettes are intricately staged in rooms (sans Photoshop or AI) that run the gamut of 19th- and 20th- century decorating styles and eras: Charles Addams-worthy High Victorian, Orientalism, Palm Springs and Palm Beach modernism, Hollywood Regency, and even early Dude Ranch — all laced with dark humor and captivating imagery. The viewer is challenged to discover the female protagonist embedded within each image, obscured by props that often portend disaster: smothering drapes, topsy-turvy sofas and lamps, a flock of doves gone wild, cascading crockery, and mammoth frogs invading a formal dining room. Carroll — whose photography is collected by MoMA, Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City — was previously a professor at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the BBA International Photography Prize First Place winner (Berlin) in 2023. "Home is not only a place for comfort and safety, but the central locus of work and play, and where psychodramas of life are experienced," the artist says. "Patty Carroll: Demise and Debacle," at Catherine Couturier Gallery, works on view through May 31; Domestic Demise & Debacle book $50; limited-edition unframed prints $1,200 to $4,000; catherinecouturiergallery.com. Beautiful Debacle 42 By Catherine D. Anspon Patty Carroll's Tuft Love, 2024, at Catherine Couturier Gallery