Pat McCarthy 
Nik Nak’s City Cart

June 29, 2019 – August 08, 2019

A note from Pat McCarthy:

“Our dachshund NikNak recently passed. He was 19, nearly 20. As a newborn pup, NikNak’s great grandfather
named him Naknikiya, hebrew for ‘hot dog’.
In Nik’s honor, I propose a grand celebration of the Lower East Side. A feast will be held. Held right in the street.
Hot dogs will be served, traded for blueprints of memories. Out of the cart we will construct a city.
Pigeons will fly.”

This body of work started as an homage to Gordon Matta Clark and the Rivington School, and grew to capture the recent loss of our dog. The opening will be a gritty summer happening: I’ll be outside the gallery operating my hot dog cart, serving kosher dogs in exchange for drawings of buildings scrawled onto napkins. Then we’ll demolish the cart on the street and with the materials (the beautiful quilted stainless steel) I’ll craft a model of the city, based on the community’s designs. Additionally lots of new sculpture will be inside the gallery, "I’ve been photocopying the pigeons!”

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 sculpture. Since 2008 he has authored the serial publication Born to Kill, producing to-date one hundred issues each printed in open edition. In 2012, he began his current practice of raising and shepherding a flock of hundreds of domestic pigeons on his rooftop in Brooklyn New York.

As part of NikNak’s City Cart, Pat McCarthy has been in residence for the month cooking and serving hot dogs in exchange for drawings of buildings (on hot dog wrappers!). With the community's designs, he's been sculpting a portrait of the city out of his hot dog cart's scrap metal.

Pat McCarthy (b. 1987, Connecticut, US) lives and works between New York City and Andes, New York. McCarthy works in sculpture, zine-making, and film. He received his training entirely in the field apprenticing under Tom Sachs and JJ PEET. McCarthy has been exhibited widely in the USA and internationally. His work is held in the public collections of the FRAC Museum, Marseille; MoMA, New York; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; and many private collections. He is a member of the collectives Satan Ceramics and 8-Ball Community.