“HEDEIHEID” by Paul McCarthy
2024 · color · USA · EN · 62’ · In competition · World premiere
A provocative exploration of familial and surreal themes set in a Swiss field. This film contrasts serene landscapes with intense, unsettling imagery. Through the interactions of a grandfather, father, and others, McCarthy delves into complex dynamics, blurring the line between reality and fantasy to create a deeply immersive and challenging narrative.
Artist Statement:
“Capturing a candid moment Hedeiheid father grandfather interconnection penetrations in a Swiss field with backdrop form with dog goat shot shifting with realistic emphasizes genuine emotions perversion escape mechanism providing lifelike portrayal joyful entanglement with goats penis vagina cheese wheel Swiss hut hat goat herd on hard goats petting prompt porn goats dog embark on as near warming adventures in serene landscapes of iconic story dirndl up skirt girl grandfather man near each other on top of the other story tonal one becomes the other becomes the goat contrast low inside of each other inside her cannibalism stretched naturelle adsorption posture girl man sharp sex prompt having sexual other her story telling prolonged inside her him the near other bloody love hype detail masochism sadomasochism morphology wide shot outside detail a7RIV RAW photographic the key light is diffused by the clouds color photo sex realistic highly detailed gigapixel nerve voltage spasm violent hyper natural lighting photo blue realistic sensual eyes textured skin photographic realism highly detailed small low saturation gore detail cinematic”
THE DIRECTOR | PAUL MCCARTY
Paul McCarthy is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artists. Born in 1945, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he first established a multi-faceted artistic practice, which sought to break the limitations of painting by using unorthodox materials such as bodily fluids and food. He has since become known for visceral, often hauntingly humorous work in a variety of mediums—from performance, photography, film and video, to sculpture, drawing and painting.
During the 1990s, he extended his practice into installations and stand-alone sculptural figures, utilizing a range of materials such as fiberglass, silicone, animatronics and inflatable vinyl. Playing on popular illusions and cultural myths, fantasy and reality collide in a delirious yet poignant exploration of the subconscious, in works that simultaneously challenge the viewer’s phenomenological expectations.
Whether absent or present, the human figure has been a constant in his work, either through the artist‘s own performances or the array of characters he creates to mix high and low culture, and provoke an analysis of our fundamental beliefs. These playfully oversized characters and objects critique the worlds from which they are drawn: Hollywood, politics, philosophy, science, art, literature, and television. McCarthy’s work, thus, locates the traumas lurking behind the stage set of the American Dream and identifies their counterparts in the art historical canon.
McCarthy earned a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1969, and an MFA in multimedia, film and art from USC in 1973. For 18 years, he taught performance, video, installation, and art history in the New Genres Department at UCLA, where he influenced future generations of west coast artists and he has exhibited extensively worldwide. McCarthy’s work comprises collaborations with artist-friends such as Mike Kelley and Jason Rhoades, as well as his son Damon McCarthy.
