Category Archives: Paul P

The Image is Gone >< January – March 2006

The Image is Gone                                             

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 13.03.2006

Marc Bijl, Banks Violette, Paul P., Michael Huey
January 19 –  March 18, 2006

Galerie Lisa Ruyter is pleased to present the group exhibition “The Image is Gone“ with Marc Bijl, Banks Violette, Paul P. and Micheal Huey. The exhibition is on from January 19 until March 18.

Marc Bijl, born 1970, Leerdam NL, takes in his work a good look at social issues and the symboles and norms involved. This results in acts or installations which undermine or emphasize our perception of the world. Thus he entitles his Lara Croft sculpture pured over with bitumen “La rivoluzione siamo noi“, or decorates spontaneous a Berlin garbage truck with the Dutch lion. Last year his works were shown at the Superstars Show at the Kunstforum Wien, in the exhibition ’Populism’ at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and others. He is represented by the young gallery ’The Breeder“ in Athens, which showed his solo exhibition ‚’Chesed/ Dien’ 2004. ’The Breeder’ gallery has supported us in every way for this project.

Banks Violette, born 1973, Ithaca, New York, USA, lives and works in New York. After a well noticed solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of the American Arts he became a Superstar of the young American art scene. He creates sculptures,graphite drawings and partly huge oil paintings inspired often by bands and record sleeves. 2006 he is going to participate in the most important projects in Europe such as “Die Jugend von heute“ at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (curated by Matthias Ulrich), “DARK“ at the Museum Boljmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, (curated by Jan Grosfeld) and “While Interwoven Echoes Drip into a Hybrid Body“ at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich.

Paul P., born 1977, Toronto, Can., is painting primarily portraits of young males and now also increasingly atmospheric landscapes by use of traditional techniques like Kreuzschraffur, pastel, oil and watercolour. While creating his paintings of unknown persons he rejects on the one hand the traditional process of producing art, on the other hand he is completely absorbed by it. His models are unknown to him and thus he is deceiving the intimacy usually linked to portraying.

Michael Huey, born Traverse City, Michigan, USA, living in Vienna since 1989. Michael Huey’s artistic method  has developed from painting, genealogical studies, art historical enquiries and collecting photographs. Since 1996 he is concentrating on historical photography and it’s realization in his work. The shining surface of the Diasec – technique reminds Michael Huey of the nineteenth century – the era of his initial specification – like for example daguerreotypes or the wet collodium – process.

Paul P. >< In the Shadow of Young Girls in Bloom >< November – December 2004

08paulpPaul P.

„In the Shadow of Young Girls in Bloom“
November 10 –  December 23, 2004

Galerie Lisa Ruyter is pleased to present Paul P.’s exhibition “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Bloom”, from 10 November – 23 December 2004.  This will be the first European solo show by the Canadian artist.

This exhibition consists of head-and-shoulders drawings and paintings of young men and a single atmospheric landscape. These works are modeled after pornographic print sources of late 1970’s and early 80’s vintage, and are rendered in traditional techniques of cross-hatching, watercolor and glazing. Paul P. has developed a simple and sophisticated engagement with portraiture, aesthetics, the art historical, and gay representation.

“In the Shadow of Young Girls in Bloom” is taken from an antiquated English language naming of the 1919 volume of Marcel Proust’s great work “In Search of Lost Time”. In the text, the adolescent narrator anguishes over a brash young gang of girls in summertime coastal France. Within his writing Proust, as the narrator, appears as a heterosexual in a world teeming with same-sex desires. By using Proust’s title, Paul P. suggests a reversion.

Taken at face value, the work of Paul P. is quite romantic in nature. In the portraits, there is nostalgia for the mythical age of sexual freedom and liberation, which was abruptly cut short by AIDS. Too young to have experienced this moment in person, Paul P. projects a complicated ambivalence towards gay representation which has often relied on – almost longed for – the quixotic pursuit of impossible fantasies.

In his processing of sexual images of unnamed people, Paul P. both embraces and rejects traditional processes of art making. He does not know his models, belying the intimacy generally implied in portraiture. Through Paul P.’s inter-textual strategies, fear, desire, paranoia and intimacy are separated from issues of sexual representation, and returned to a place of lived experience.

Paul P. was born in 1977 and currently lives and works in Toronto. Recent solo exhibitions include Daniel Reich, New York, Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles and Angstrom Gallery, Dallas.  He has been included in group shows at David Zwirner and Andrea Rosen, both in New York, The Power Plant in Toronto and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg.