Thaddaeus Ropac

Paul P.

25 Nov 2006 - 20 Jan 2007

PAUL P.
"Blue and Opal"

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by the Canadian artist Paul P. The artist’s work was first shown in Salzburg in « Heavenly Creatures », a group exhibition curated by Lisa Ruyter in 2004. Titled « Blue and Opal », this is Paul P.’s first solo show in Austria. This new series of oil paintings and watercolours continues to explore the artist’s interest for late 19th century painting.
"The boys in his pictures, all of whom posed for soft-core gay porn magazines between the late 1960s and early 1980s, were at their post-adolescent peak just before another sort of fin de siecle - the anything-goes era that ended abruptly with the coming of AIDS...These boys become emblems - not of innocence, perhaps...but of liberation or, perhaps, sweet abandon. Recovering their images, he's also recovering a largely buried part of the gay past and shining a light on lives that both anticipated and paralleled his own.... P. zeroes in on faces that capture their time and transcend it, faces that express something deeper than the usual crude leer." "His work conflates memory, ecstasy and loss, adolescence and decadence, ripe beauty and its inevitable rot. His drawings are deft and precise, but they're not cool, not detached, not modern. Instead, they're discreetly, seductively romantic, at once restrained and voluptuous (...)".
Vince Aletti, The Yellow Room
Paul P.’s received a BFA from York University, Toronto in 2000. He has been recently featured in solo exhibitions at the following galleries : Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris and special project Artforum, Berlin; Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angles ; Gallery Side 2, Tokyo, and Daniel Reich Gallery, New York. Selected group shows include : Mary Boone Gallery, New York ; David Zwirner Gallery, New York ; The Power Plant, Toronto. His first monograph, published by Powerhouse Books, New York, is scheduled to appear in spring 2007. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NY and other public collections.
For further information, please contact Elena Bortolotti (+331 42 72 99 00 or elena@ropac.net).
To obtain visual elements, please contact Eva Glittenberg, eva.glittenberg@ropac.at
 

Tags: Paul P., Lisa Ruyter