Pat McCarthy
Vessels of Experience

Feat. Landscape Paintings by Louis Somveille

May 8 – June 7, 2025
48 Ludlow Street, NYC

Entrance is excited to present Vessels of Experience, new sculpture by Pat McCarthy, his second exhibition at the gallery following Nik Nak’s City Cart in 2019, following years of collaboration with Entrance.

The four seasons are presented through the artist’s experimentations at his upstate farm in the Catskill Mountains of New York. The making of sculpture, agriculture, vinification and daily chores are one and the same in Pat’s practice. Pat keeps pigeons, while his wife, Maddy Ringold-Brown, tends the flower fields, together managing the orchards, vineyards, and stewarding the hardwood forest on the property. Affectionately named Nik Nak’s Farm memorializing their late and now legendary Dachshund.

Sourcing materials from the landscape, Pat crafts poetic narrative through objects which speak to the hyper-personal yet universal. A baby crib, woven from grapevines, captures the anxiety for first-time fathers to be. Hand-milled planks of black cherry and ash become a wood burning stove covered in ceramic mushrooms, a portrait of the forest’s bones and veins. Their tractors, hand-me-downs from neighboring farmers, are transmuted and represented in English porcelain. Bricolaged pigeons assembled from bottles of wine and dried fruit celebrate the terroir of the upstate environment — a rocky, wet, and cold paradise.

Served at the opening are the artist’s farm-made plant-based “oysters”, alongside home-brewed grape and fruit wines poured from handmade Porcelain jugs that are included as works in the exhibition. An oak barrel containing unfiltered Catskill mountain spring water offers a final, focused expression of place.

Vessels of Experience also features landscape paintings by Louis Somveille (b. 1994, Nancy, France). Currently living and working in Paris, Somveille’s summer painting residency on Nik Nak’s Farm captured the vistas that backdrop Pat’s artistic endeavors and farm life in Andes, New York.

Pat McCarthy (b. 1987) lives and works in Brooklyn and Andes, New York. McCarthy works primarily in sculpture, zines, and video, as well as staging social happenings, many of which include street food. McCarthy’s work deliberately traverses many mediums and disciplines to explore methods of storytelling. Since 2012, much of his work is executed on his Brooklyn rooftop, engaging with the hundreds of domestic pigeons he is raising and flying.

McCarthy’s work has been presented in institutional exhibitions at Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (2023), Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn, NY (2022), Manifesta 13, Marseille, FR (2020), MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2018), Middelheim Sculpture Museum, Antwerp, BE (2017), Aperture Foundation, New York, NY (2016), Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Sud, Marseille (2016), MoMA, New York, NY (2015). His work is in the collections of MoMA, New York, NY; Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, FR; Museo Jumex, Mexico City, MX; La Fab, Paris, FR. Pat McCarthy has worked with Entrance in the states and internationally since his first solo with the gallery in 2019, Nik Nak's City Cart.

Louis Somveille (b. 1994, Nancy, France) lives and works in Paris, France. Somveille works primarily in painting, focusing on the efficient movement of the brush through motifs of abstract gestures. Preferring large formats despite often being confined to small, dark spaces in Paris, Somveille also enjoys painting the countryside where the economy of space fits his works. His practice incorporates ready-mades as formal poetry – from books to postcards – experimenting with equivalency between syntax and iconography. Strongly influenced by the Romantic era, the 'Jugendstil' and American Abstract Expressionism, Somveille paints 'de chic', meaning never working from photographs, only from nature (trees, swans, self portraits) and his slightly disturbed imagination.

Somveille's work has been presented in solo exhibitions including "Le soleil naît derrière le Louvre" at Le Laboratoire de la Création, Paris (2025), "Déclaration d'Amour" at Le Printemps, Arles (2022), "Dégradation" at Galerie Keur, Paris (2022), and "Quatre Chemins" at La Volonté93, Saint-Ouen (2021). His work has appeared in group exhibitions including "Sweet Moselle" at Le Lée, Metz (2025), "Another dandelion fantasy" at Okay Space, Athens (2025), and "PAR-A-FRAS-E" at Heroïnes, Frankfurt (2024). His work is in the collection of Agnès B. in Paris.

Pat McCarthy, Bouquet Jugs, 2025
Photocopy toner fired on English porcelain, gold leaf, cork, wax
12 x 9 x 9 inches (30.5 x 23 x 23 cm)

For inquiries, email info@entrance.nyc