Awkward Transactions

In Awkward Transactions, a creative exchange unfolds between photographer Wilson and painter McCarthy, with Wilson’s photos serving as the “call,” and McCarthy’s interventions in paint as the “response.”

Wilson’s source material is resolutely ordinary—zoos, aquariums, storefronts. Filtered through visual noise, familiar environments are pushed into near-abstraction. The resulting photos offer images already slipping loose from straightforward description. With large-scale prints of these on paper, McCarthy begins her counterpoint, tracing and interrupting rather than neatly “completing” the photos. Her gestures read more as incursion than embellishment. The collaboration plays out as a charged visual exchange, wherein each artist risks being overtaken by the other’s language.