Paul P.
Untitled
2011
Ink on Paper
30 x 22 cm
Artist Paul P. mines what is masked rather than what is missing, and juxtaposes an imagined future against a challenged reality.
He is interested in how, in the context of homophobia and criminalized homosexuality, innuendo and allegory have been used to convey queer desire. P.’s plein air drawings track the echo of provisional freedoms in landscapes that hosted subcultural production like Boboli gardens in Florence, Italy and Venice Beach in CA.
He also finds freedom evoked in “dandy” poets like Stephen Tennant and Brian Howard who represent “intimate milieus that have striven for, and plotted out, fantastical visions of civilization filled with beauty, reason, and freedom, at time when the world has been at its most hostile.”
Paul P.
Untitled
2010
31 x 21 cm
lithograph, edition of 16
Paul P. first became known for his drawings and paintings of young men that systematically re-imagined found erotic photographs along nineteenth century aesthetic modes. In recent years the artist’s interests in transience, desire, cataloging, and notation have expanded to include landscapes, abstraction, and sculptural works in the form of furniture.
Paul P. was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, as well as in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Freud Museum, London. His work is in the collections of MoMA, The Brooklyn Museum, The Whitney Museum, among others.
Image credit: portrait 2017, Sunny Suits