From June 13 to June 26 at One art space Gallery at 23 Warren Street, 10007, New York, New York
With Under Construction, Paturel’s focus is on our mental images of cities in natural context. His paintings are like instant snapshots of urban environments and artifacts at critical moments of their development such as their birth, disappearance and metamorphosis. Those critical state let them reveal their logic, inherent utopias but also their materiality, fragility and hesitations.
/ credit photo benoit paillet
From left to right: Photo by: Benoît Pailley Project in Antarctic II, 2013, Acrylic and Collage on Wood, 47″ x 95″; Project in Antarctic I, 2013, Acrylic and Collage on Wood, 47″ x 95″; Highway & Clouds, 2012, Acrylic and Collage on Wood, 71″ x 71″
In the wide and desert Antarctic series of paintings, while mixing cool and warm colors, natural elements reveal their strength besides the movement that Paturel creates with the layering of coats of tape collage. Guillaume Paturel relates this series to birth. The paint is scratched, sanded to reveal the stratification of elements, since our planet is a layering of mineral elements of plate tectonics, being constantly displaced. Creation in a natural environment is one of the main focuses in the exhibition Under Construction.
The hurricane Sandy that hit NYC and completely destroyed Breezy Point in Queens inspired the painting Highway and Clouds, as the cloud came and took away every trace of life, leaving the landscape free to a new birth.