For Carter Mull, photography is a not so much a transparent truth telling device, as it is a kind of inherently constructed material theatre that originates in the apparatus of photography itself. In Ethics of Everyday Fiction, his second solo show with Rivington Arms, Carter presents eight photographs, two propped sculptures, and one floor bound stage-like work – all material and semiotic investigations into ideas about historical and performative time and conditions.

In the recent past, Carter has produced traditionally hung photo works as well as both floor and ceiling bound photographic installations. His new sculptural work is reliant on the photographic idea of the trace, but the works push his formal lexicon by introducing painting as a mode of production used in the service of his prop like sculpture.

Like the Pictures generation, Carter makes photographs from photographs, but instead of relying on imagery from the media as the ultimate source, clippings from his extensive photographic archive are treated as just one of many active materials in his studio. Through his relationship to materials and his usage of photographic strategies, Carter’s work complicates the traditional notions of reportage and documentary by positing meaning in the photographic prints themselves. The new photographs are an extension of his 2007 solo show at Marc Foxx gallery in Los Angeles – and are as much structural investigations into the medium as they are visual forms of communication addressing concerns with performative, historical and material time.