I only just learnt of the death of Lawrence Carroll, some two weeks after the event. Following on from Thomas Nozkowski, whose fame in the world of art was greater I suppose, its very sad. Carroll I first came across back in 1992 on a visit to Documenta 9. In a single room I saw my first ‘ribbon’ Marden‘s in the flesh, ditto my first Jonathan Lasker‘s and my first sighting at all of Olav Christopher Jenssen. It was for any painter quite a sight and I was there for a long while.
Documenta 9 was quite heavily criticised at the time. Belgian curator Jan Hoet was a bit of an outsider, very pugnacious and quite opinionated it seems. I imagine he didn’t take prisoners. Besides which he used the opportunity to promote fellow countrymen (and most of those he selected from wherever were men) including now well-known Luc Tuymans, Thierry De Cordier, Raoul De Keyser and Jan Fabre as well as others less so, Michel Francois, for example. As an aside I’ve no problem with this – Hoet had an opportunity to showcase talent from Belgium on the wider stage and grasped it, putting someone like De Keyser into an arena one suspects he’d otherwise never have been recognised in.
He also had a ‘thing’ for the obdurate, insistent, gestalt object. Besides Carroll’s lumbering wall objects several other painters and sculptors could be grouped together. Michael Biberstein‘s canvas, Helmut Dorner‘s groupings of paintings and Anish Kapoor‘s Descent Into Limbo were just some of the pieces that made up a strong showing for ‘blank’ perhaps best exemplified by the inclusion of the grey paintings of Gerhard Richter.
But the Carroll’s have lived with me for many years now and although I have moved far from the idea of the ‘gestalt’ in my work I recall them fondly. His obituary by David Carrier tells of his life in Italy and also of his continuing career, mostly across Europe, rather than here or in the States. Sad to see him gone.
Plainly Painting - David Manley 
Thanks for alerting me to Lawrence Carroll – an artist unknown to me but whose work is right up my street. I too am a painter who loves Arte Povera. I can see why he found a home in Europe. Mind you it is a shame that an artist has to die before you find him or her.