GRAZ.- The Grazer Kunstverein is presenting House, the first European institutional exhibition of New York-based artist Drake Carr.

The work of Drake Carr (b. 1993, Flint, MI) observes how social worlds, places, and moments can be captured, recorded, and translated into drawing. Often, his portraits respond to the textures of a place—people, gestures, décor, color, atmosphere—capturing both a fraction in time and the dynamics of social life. In projects such as Walk-Ins (2023, 2024, 2025), he has documented social scenes in New York, Paris, and Los Angeles, rendering the extraordinary and the everyday alike.

Now, as part of the 40th anniversary program of the Grazer Kunstverein, Carr will install himself in the galleries and invite individuals who form part of the institution’s orbit—artists, collaborators, team members, and members of its audience—to pose for portraits to be drawn onsite. Over the course of the exhibition, the drawings that result from this will coalesce into a portrait not of single figures but of the institution itself: Grazer Kunstverein as it exists today, and the constellation of people who have shaped it over the last four decades.

To facilitate these portraits, Carr has constructed three modular sets within the gallery. Balancing the expressive seriousness of design with a subtle sense of Camp. As in earlier projects, he collaborated on these tableaux with his mother, Wendy Carr, who operates an interior design studio from the home where he grew up. Carefully composed, the sets in House function both as self-contained works and as functional spaces for the encounters that unfold therein, inviting each sitter to step into a role and, for a moment, imagine these interiors as their own. Just as good acting can conjure something true about the actor, the director, and the moment, these dynamic, staged environments aim to reveal the Grazer Kunstverein itself—in mid-act of being itself—slightly overdressed, beautifully lit, a little self-aware, yet, entirely alive.