Between the promising beginning of an artistic career and the mature later works lies a long path through the desert of “midcareer”. The advantage of youth is used up, but it’s still too early for stocktaking. The audience thinks it knows what to expect, loses its curiosity and turns to younger ones. The artists continue to work. The fine line they walk appears fragile, with the threat of coming to a safe stall, on the one side, and a further development of their art that risks marginalizing them, on the other. All this could be regarded as a career cliché, but the expectations that contribute to determining the activities of artists do exist. Heteronomous images that some, in part unwittingly, seek to fulfill, and others, at times deliberately, seek to challenge. And even an offensive of challenge can become a strategy of seduction. Those from whom something is expected use it in an attempt to control the rules of the game. They no longer let themselves be playthings of the conditions, but try to shape these conditions themselves.

Works by Merlin Carpenter (*1967, lives in Shepperton, UK) have been presented amongst others at MD 72, Berlin (2015), Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club, Miami (2015), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015), Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2015), Nang Gallery, London (2015), Overduin & Co., Los Angeles (2014), Simon Lee, Hong Kong (2014), Galeria Nuno Centeno, Porto (2013), dépendance, Brussels (2013), Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York (2012), Kölnischer Kunstverein (2007), Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2006), Bergen Kunsthall (2005), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2004), American Fine Arts, Co., New York (2003), Secession, Vienna (2000), Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2000), Galerie Max Hetzler, Cologne (1992), and Birgit Küng, Zurich (1991). Further projects: The Burberry Propaganda Tour 2013, The Opening (2007–2009).

Kunsthalle Bern would like to thank the Confederation, the city of Berne, and Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung, Berne, for their generous support.
The exhibition was supported by the No Leftovers-Fonds.