Attention
We need to empty your cart before you can proceed. You will be able to continue shopping as usual after you complete the raffle checkout.
Back to Exhibitions
Alicia McCarthy
Eighteen is pleased to present
Alicia McCarthy
A solo exhibition by Alicia McCarthy
March 12 – April 25, 2026
Opening reception: March 13, 16.00 – 21.00
Slagtehusgade 18
1715 Copehagen
Alicia McCarthy’s abstract and colourful compositions instantly capture the viewer’s attention. From afar, the use of repeated geometric patterns recalls the Op Art of the 1960s. A closer look yet reveals that these optical effects aren’t engineered and calculated by machines with mathematical precision, but the result of a spontaneous gesture. McCarthy’s modular blocks of colours are rather improvised and embodied. By incorporating drips and splashes of colour, she lets her hand run free in her work, boldly embracing vibrant imperfection. Her works are built up from the centre, line by line, with a strong sense of presence.
The bands of colour do not merely form grids; they are interwoven in tapestry-like patterns. Where they intersect and connect, the colours shift. Minimal yet complex, simple yet deeply profound, the works play with our perception. Listen with your eyes, get carried away by the movement and rhythm composed by the lines, like musical scores, listen, and feel the stories they tell. Each line has a distinct character, the relationship between them is social – they interact with each other and us. Telling a visual story of interconnectedness, community, and the complex social structures keeping us together as a whole.
While an obvious comparison would be Josef Albers, inserting his squares within other square shapes, it is rather Anni Albers from the Bauhaus movement that McCarthy's handcrafted geometry evokes. Just like Anni with textile, McCarthy weaves bands of colour into tapestry-like patterns. Through repetition and the interplay of colours and textures, both artists use art as a tool for exploring personal and social narratives. McCarthy also draws on the freedom and experimental process associated with Black Mountain College. Although far removed from the Albers' formal rigor, McCarthy's contemporary style transforms these legacies into her own lively visual language.
McCarthy expresses a personal and urban poetics, close to the spontaneity of graffiti. Beyond the motif, her work originates in an ongoing experimentation with materiality. Rooted in San Francisco’s active queer punk scene, Alicia McCarthy is one of the central figures of what is known as the “Mission School”, alongside Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Ruby Neri, and Chris Johanson. Named after San Francisco’s Mission District, where the artists lived and worked in the 1990s, then still a low-rent, pre-gentrified neighbourhood, the group came together around independent music, skateboarding, community-driven projects, queer politics, and zine publishing. Influenced by their diverse urban surroundings, the natural beauty near San Francisco, they began making art that carried a myriad of sentiments: simultaneously upbeat and downbeat, abstract and figurative, harsh yet humorously tender, rooted in tradition yet avant-garde.
Alicia McCarthy, born 1969, lives and works in Oakland, US. McCarthy received a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1994, and an MFA from the University of California at Berkeley in 2005. She has received numerous awards, including the Academy of Art and Sciences, SFMOMA's SECA Art Award, and the Artadia Award. McCarthy has exhibited across America and internationally. Recent major exhibitions include: pt.2 Gallery, Oakland, US (2025); Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC, US (2025); Michael Benevento, LA, US (2024); Jack Hanley Gallery, NYC, US (2024); pt.2 Gallery, Oakland, US (2023); Orange County Museum, CA, US (2022); Jack Hanley, New York, US (2021); Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, US (2020); Alice Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2019); Wexner Center for the Arts, OH, US, (2019); The Berkeley Art Museum, CA, US (2018) and SFMoMa, SF, US (2017). Her works have been permanently acquired by MIMA the Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art in Brussels, American Academy of Arts & Letters in New York City, Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park, CA and Oakland Museum of California. McCarthy has taken part in several group exhibitions at V1 Gallery, this is her fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.
_
In 2017, Alicia McCarthy received the SECA Art Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA). As part of the award, she exhibited at the museum, which also acquired her work for its permanent collection. On this occasion, SFMoMA produced a video showcasing McCarthy's creative process.