(catalogue excerpt)
Like blurry afterimages drifting past closed eyelids, Kim McCarty's watercolors depicting adolescent and preadolescent children hover between presence and absence, innocence and wisdom, and past, present, and future. Working rapidly, at times using only a single color and at others a haunting, bruise-inspired palette of acid yellows, greens, and browns, McCarty's portraits evoke the sense of uncertainty, ambivalence, anxiety, and loss with which we view today's generation of children and young adults. A graduate of UCLA (MFA) and the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena (BFA), McCarty has had recent solo exhibitions at Cherrydelosreyes, Los Angeles (2003); Rebecca Ibel, Columbus, Ohio (2002); and Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna, CA (2002). Recent group exhibitions include Toyland at Alysia Duckler Gallery, Portland, Oregon and Fresh Start at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (2002).

(press release)
Drawing, once considered the most traditional of mediums, has undergone a dramatic renaissance over the past several decades. One of the most personal, immediate, and accessible forms of art, drawings offer insight into the ongoing preoccupations and concerns of the artist who puts his or her ideas onto paper. Today, more and more artists have begun to view drawing as an end in itself rather than as a preparatory phase in service of another medium. International Paper demonstrates that the medium of drawing continues to play a fresh and vital role in the practice of a younger generation of artists. "Like the Hammer's 2001 exhibition Snapshot: New Art from Los Angeles," International Paper attempts to give our audience a sense of the richness and diversity of works on paper - and specifically drawings - by contemporary artists in the U.S. and beyond," says exhibition co-curator Claudine Ise. "The exhibition recognizes the fact that drawing is an age-old practice that nevertheless continues to inspire innovation and experimentation among artists today." The exhibition will survey the range and breadth of contemporary works on paper by a diverse group of twenty--two emerging artists from China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, and the United States, while highlighting the work of a number of Los Angeles artists for whom drawing plays an important and ongoing role. It explores the broad range of techniques and approaches that one finds in drawings today-including the use of watercolors, gouache, graphite, and colored pencil, along with paper cut-outs, mixed-media collage, and scored and folded vellum-and includes both representational and abstract works and large- and small-scale drawings.

Artists in the Exhibition The artists featured in International Paper are Nina Lola Bachhuber, Hillary Bleecker, Iona Rozeal Brown, Carolyn Castano, Honda Takeshi, Li Jin, Alice Konitz, Lansing-Dreiden, Nick Lowe, Yuri Masnyj, Kim McCarty, Aaron Morse, Sandeep Mukherjee, Jockum Nordstrom, Shaun O'Dell, Alessandro Pessoli, Shunsuke Sawaguchi, Silke Schatz, Matthew Sontheimer, Tam Van Tran, Pablo Vargas-Lugo, and Katharina Wulff.

The exhibition was curated by James Elaine, Claudine Ise, and Ann Philbin.