Lawrence Carroll - Works on paper
Italy, 2022
Art, Documentary
What this film tells
Folded canvases, old shoes, newspapers, fragments of wood — Lawrence Carroll recovers the ordinary and buries it beneath slow layers of wax and white, until memory and painting become one surface.
Why it matters
In an art world increasingly driven by spectacle and speed, Lawrence Carroll's work is a deliberate act of resistance. His paintings do not announce themselves. They accumulate, settle, and wait.Works on Paper matters because it documents a body of work that is as much about time as it is about image — and because it does so in a format that respects that same quality of attention. For a platform like AnotherStory, Carroll represents a vital counterweight: art that asks the viewer to slow down, look again, and find the extraordinary in the surface of the ordinary.
What this film tells
Folded canvases, old shoes, newspapers, fragments of wood — Lawrence Carroll recovers the ordinary and buries it beneath slow layers of wax and white, until memory and painting become one surface.
Why it matters
In an art world increasingly driven by spectacle and speed, Lawrence Carroll's work is a deliberate act of resistance. His paintings do not announce themselves. They accumulate, settle, and wait.Works on Paper matters because it documents a body of work that is as much about time as it is about image — and because it does so in a format that respects that same quality of attention. For a platform like AnotherStory, Carroll represents a vital counterweight: art that asks the viewer to slow down, look again, and find the extraordinary in the surface of the ordinary.
Lawrence Carroll
Lawrence Carroll (Melbourne, Australia, 1954 — Bolzano, Italy, 2019) was one of the most quietly radical painters of his generation. Born in Australia, raised in the United States, and based for much of his later life between New York and rural Italy, Carroll occupied a unique position in contemporary art — celebrated by institutions and collectors across Europe and America, yet consistently resistant to the currents of fashion and trend.
His practice was rooted in the material life of everyday objects. Canvases were folded, stretched, and restretched. Shoes, newspapers, and fragments of wood were embedded into surfaces and gradually absorbed beneath accumulating layers of oil, acrylic, and wax — warm whites, occasional traces of color, the ghost of a texture breaking through. The objects were not hidden but preserved: their histories made visible through the very process of being covered.
Carroll exhibited widely throughout his career, with solo shows at major galleries and institutions in Italy, Germany, the United States, and beyond. Studio Trisorio in Naples was among his closest and most enduring gallery relationships, hosting several exhibitions of his work over the years.
He died in Bolzano in 2019. His work continues to be exhibited and collected internationally, and his influence on a generation of painters working at the intersection of materiality, memory, and abstraction remains quietly profound.
Community rating
Rate this film
How would you rate Lawrence Carroll - Works on paper? Your vote shapes the collective score.
No ratings yet
Rate this film
—
Conversation
Comments
Sign in to join the conversation.
Loading comments...