Lawrence Carroll AUSTRALIAN / AMERICAN, 1954-2019

Lawrence Carroll incorporated unconventional objects into his paintings to question the relationship between painting and sculpture in contemporary art. Carroll was born in Melbourne and moved to Santa Monica, California, as a child. After graduating from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, he relocated to New York City in 1984. There, he started to garner attention for his box works—oil paintings stapled and stitched together in the shape of a box. His later works also involved three-dimensional elements through the introduction of new objects or the creation of small recesses within a painting. Carroll relied on traditional materials like oil and wood in his works, but he also experimented with unorthodox materials. In “White Oval Paintings” (2015–17), for example, Carroll used house paint and dust from his studio. Carroll was among the artists featured in the Vatican’s first appearance at the Venice Biennale in 2013, where he exhibited five abstract paintings engaged with the theme of re-creation.