Thursday, March 28, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
18 drawings and 1 painting at Studio 10 - 56 Bogart Street Brooklyn opening April 12th
untitled from series "Search for Mengfu" sept 16th 2012 gesso paper and oil paint 12" 1/2 x 12" 1/2
untitled from series "Search for Mengfu" sept 16th 2012 gesso paper graphite and oil paint 12" 1/2 x 12" 1/2
Monday, January 28, 2013
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Around the Corner Four Painters Living in Tribeca: Hermine Ford, Joanne Greenbaum, Paul Pagk, Gary Stephan September 18th - December 9th, 2012
143 Reade Street - New York 10013
Organized by
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| Féerie, 2012 oil on linen 65" X 64" |
Saturday, September 08, 2012
Line and Plane McKenzie Fine Art Sept 5th to Oct 28th 2012
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Surface Affect
REY AKDOGAN
ANTOINE CATALA
FLORIAN HECKER
SAM LEWITT
PAUL PAGK
RAHA RAISSNIA
In Memorium Jackie MacAllister
May 4 - June 24, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, May 4, 2012, 7 - 9 PM
Slide projection performance by Raha Raissnia
Thursday, June 21, 2012, 9 PM
Miguel Abreu Gallery is pleased to announce the opening, on Friday, May 4th, of Surface Affect, a group exhibition that brings together six artists working in various media, from sound work and slide projection to painting and video installation. The aim of the show is to foreground how each of the selected works exists first and foremost through the distinct affective qualities of its material surfaces, while simultaneously and in the last instance offering a degree of critical remove for the viewer.
For more information or for visuals, please contact the gallery:
Miguel Abreu Gallery
36 Orchard Street (between Canal & Hester), New York, NY 10002
Telephone 212.995.1774 • Fax 646.688.2302 • post@miguelabreugallery.com
Gallery hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 11:00 AM to 6:30 PM
Subway: F to East Broadway; B, D to Grand Street; J, M, Z to Delancey / Essex Street
http://www.miguelabreugallery.com/GroupShows/2012_SurfaceAffect/01.htm
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/art/surface-affect-mixed-media
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Spring Summer 2011
 
'o g l s 129' 28" x 27" oil on linen 2010 2011
These are a Few of My Favorite Things.... Curated by Jerelyn Hanrahan at The End 13 Greenpoint Av, Brooklyn
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Thursday, March 24, 2011
70 Years of Abstract Painting – Excerpts at Jason McCoy inc. & Mesquite Drawings at Some Walls, Oakland, CA
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| “Mesquite drawing” 2010, mixed media on paper, 14" x 17" |
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“Mesquite drawings” 2010, mixed media on paper, 14" x 17" x 18
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| o g l s 127 oil on linen 25" x 24" 2010 |
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| Paul Pagk, Cora Cohen and Josef Albers |
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| John McLaughlin, Paul Pagk |
Saturday, March 12, 2011
PAPER A-Z @ Sue Scott Gallery March – 22 April 2011
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| Untitled (Mesquite drawings) pencil and watercolor on paper 14" x 16"1/2 2010 |
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| Untitled (Mesquite drawings) pencil, oil pastel and ink on paper 14" x 16"1/2 2010 |
Saturday, February 19, 2011
GEOMETRIC DAYS @ EXIT ART
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| 'All Tomorrow's Parties' oil on linen 76" x 74" 2010 |
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'Mobile Home' oil on linen 76" x 74" 2010
'Aligned deepdown from above on the edge' oil on linen 76" x 74" 2008 2010
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| 'Place' oil on linen 76" x 74" 2010 |
GEOMETRIC DAYS
February 25-April 30, 2011
ARTISTS
Rico Gatson, Charles Koegel, Peter Hildebrand, Geoffrey Owen Miller, Driss Ouadahi, Paul Pagk, Nathlie Provosty, and Dannielle Tegeder
Curated by Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberman with Herb Tam
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Informal Relations @ Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art curated by Scott Grow
'untitled' ink, oil pastel and pencil on paper 22"5 x 15" 2005online catalog:
http://issuu.com/scottgrowstudio/docs/informal_relations_catalog
Painting and Sculpture Foundation for Contemporary Art Benefit @ Lehmann Maupin Dec 2010 Jan 2011
http://artcards.cc/review/fca-benefit-at-lehmann-maupin/2850/#more-2850
Monday, September 27, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Summer group show LUSH LIFE
ogls 111 oil on linen 27" x 26" 2010
ogls 116 oil on linen 28" x 27" 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Recent Paintings My red maybe your orange, even @ Galerie Eric Dupont Paris March 13th to April 17th
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| Red Insertion 76" x 74" oil on linen 2008 2009 |
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| Between Heaven and Earth 65" x 74" oil on linen 2008 2009 |
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| 4 - 2 - 8 - 3 60" x 62" oil on linen 2008 2009 |
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| ESP / Cuban Boxer 2 62" x 60" oil on linen 2009 |
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| Three Ways 62" x 60" oil on linen 2009 2010 |
My red maybe your orange, even
On the evidence of most comments, Paul Pagk’s work is purely geometric abstraction – it is in the heritage of American Minimalism, for fans of clearer labels.
This association is not sufficient. Born in 1962 in England, Pagk is only three years old when his compatriot Richard Wollheim publishes the first article defining minimal art. From 16 to 20 years, he moves to Paris, he studies at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, but he crosses the Seine as often as possible to get to the Louvre or to the Pompidou Centre. There he enthuses as much for classical as for modern painting, and leaves himself exposed as well to Ingres, to Delacroix, to Picasso and to Matisse. A real bulimia. “I looked so many painters, he says, that it’s difficult to mention them all”. He adds, “I really can not say who influenced me the most”. Because what interests him then is learning to paint. Observing, studying the surface of masters’ pieces – not their labels.
The contact with minimalism occurs when Pagk arrives in New York in 1988. « A shock » which stimulates him to simplify his forms : it remains today only lines wich intersects at right angles (Red Insertion), geometrical structures in the shape of lozenges, trapezoids (4-2-8-3), parallepipeds (ESP – the Cuban boxer) or pyramidal (3-ways, the Village Green). The reduction is such that critics return him easily to his predecessors, Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt or Dan Flavin most often. But what Pagk retains from them is mainly their interest in the Merleau-Pontian philosophy. He wanted to be a painter at the age of seven years, he practiced the classical ballet, and it is not a coincidence that he is sensitive to the idea that the body and perception are constituents of our experience to the world. In effect Pagk has not changed. « I am basically a painter and painting is my subject », he repeats. He is fascinated by painting and the relation to body it establishes – not labels.
Look at his hands. His fingers and nails show his paintings’ colours and betray the cooking to which he devotes himself ritually to prepare his painting – a mixture of oil and pure pigments which he keeps secret recipe. His studio is also far to look like a sterile laboratory. The disorder reigns. If walls remain almost white, tins of paint, pigments, paintbrushes, rags and mixer knives pile up on the table that serves as his palette, coated with multiple layers of paint of which smell make us feel it is still fresh.
It is enough that the eye adapts a few moments to notice the thickness of the pictorial surface. Rather than being monochromatic and economical, it makes visible the superimposition of many layers of colours that do not overlap completely (4-2-8-3). Far from being smooth, it reveals fragments of coagulated paint, marks of brush strokes or lines tirelessly taken back (ESP) – in fact it reveals the creation process and preserves memory from it. These subtle variations of colours and material play with light and create optic vibrations, which fluctuate permanently according to illumination. They catch the eye of the viewer, who, if he accepts to be grabbed by their magic, will leave his entire body there. The perception of the work is such that “the more we look at it, the more the painting opens and reveals itself.”
The line is not so clear it appears at first sight. Indeed Pagk begins by tracing the outline of his structures, then encircles them, covers them with large colour plans, and rediscovers them alternately, incessantly. The distinction between line and colour fades, the boundaries are constantly redefined. The result is therefore an impression of movement : line quivers, and gradually the geometric rigor of the painting wavers while the structures teeters in a unspecified manner between the foreground and the background of the canvas, cast forward or conversely immersed by colour.
In abeyance, these structures are not necessarily evanescent. The artist captures their materiality by hanging them all along the canvas, as if to anchor them securely in the physical world of the viewer, thus giving them the opportunity to spread freely beyond the painting. Even the stangely puffy yellow shape, that we notice as it is an exception, does not float. It is not fasten to the frame, but stays isolated Between Heaven and Earth.
If we look closer, Paul Pagk’s painting is not so wise and minimal we like to admit. It is luxuriant in colours, carnal in consistency (4-2-8-3), indefinite or childlike in its strokes (ESP) and sometimes funny in some of these swelling unlikely forms (Between Heaven and Earth).
Against the theoretical and historical pedigree, the ambiguity and richness of this work reminds us that we must be wary of this "little knowledge of association" (Jean-Louis Schefer): a tic as safe as the famous Meetic, which avoids direct relation and guarantees against the alleged danger of the unknown. Tactile, Pagk’s painting requires instead a sensitive contact and without mediation. The meeting is not without risk, the work is not there to provide "an immediate understanding, but the possibility of the unknown". So it is a true blind date that Eric Dupont Gallery invites us to.
Séverine Gossart
On the evidence of most comments, Paul Pagk’s work is purely geometric abstraction – it is in the heritage of American Minimalism, for fans of clearer labels.
This association is not sufficient. Born in 1962 in England, Pagk is only three years old when his compatriot Richard Wollheim publishes the first article defining minimal art. From 16 to 20 years, he moves to Paris, he studies at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, but he crosses the Seine as often as possible to get to the Louvre or to the Pompidou Centre. There he enthuses as much for classical as for modern painting, and leaves himself exposed as well to Ingres, to Delacroix, to Picasso and to Matisse. A real bulimia. “I looked so many painters, he says, that it’s difficult to mention them all”. He adds, “I really can not say who influenced me the most”. Because what interests him then is learning to paint. Observing, studying the surface of masters’ pieces – not their labels.
The contact with minimalism occurs when Pagk arrives in New York in 1988. « A shock » which stimulates him to simplify his forms : it remains today only lines wich intersects at right angles (Red Insertion), geometrical structures in the shape of lozenges, trapezoids (4-2-8-3), parallepipeds (ESP – the Cuban boxer) or pyramidal (3-ways, the Village Green). The reduction is such that critics return him easily to his predecessors, Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt or Dan Flavin most often. But what Pagk retains from them is mainly their interest in the Merleau-Pontian philosophy. He wanted to be a painter at the age of seven years, he practiced the classical ballet, and it is not a coincidence that he is sensitive to the idea that the body and perception are constituents of our experience to the world. In effect Pagk has not changed. « I am basically a painter and painting is my subject », he repeats. He is fascinated by painting and the relation to body it establishes – not labels.
Look at his hands. His fingers and nails show his paintings’ colours and betray the cooking to which he devotes himself ritually to prepare his painting – a mixture of oil and pure pigments which he keeps secret recipe. His studio is also far to look like a sterile laboratory. The disorder reigns. If walls remain almost white, tins of paint, pigments, paintbrushes, rags and mixer knives pile up on the table that serves as his palette, coated with multiple layers of paint of which smell make us feel it is still fresh.
It is enough that the eye adapts a few moments to notice the thickness of the pictorial surface. Rather than being monochromatic and economical, it makes visible the superimposition of many layers of colours that do not overlap completely (4-2-8-3). Far from being smooth, it reveals fragments of coagulated paint, marks of brush strokes or lines tirelessly taken back (ESP) – in fact it reveals the creation process and preserves memory from it. These subtle variations of colours and material play with light and create optic vibrations, which fluctuate permanently according to illumination. They catch the eye of the viewer, who, if he accepts to be grabbed by their magic, will leave his entire body there. The perception of the work is such that “the more we look at it, the more the painting opens and reveals itself.”
The line is not so clear it appears at first sight. Indeed Pagk begins by tracing the outline of his structures, then encircles them, covers them with large colour plans, and rediscovers them alternately, incessantly. The distinction between line and colour fades, the boundaries are constantly redefined. The result is therefore an impression of movement : line quivers, and gradually the geometric rigor of the painting wavers while the structures teeters in a unspecified manner between the foreground and the background of the canvas, cast forward or conversely immersed by colour.
In abeyance, these structures are not necessarily evanescent. The artist captures their materiality by hanging them all along the canvas, as if to anchor them securely in the physical world of the viewer, thus giving them the opportunity to spread freely beyond the painting. Even the stangely puffy yellow shape, that we notice as it is an exception, does not float. It is not fasten to the frame, but stays isolated Between Heaven and Earth.
If we look closer, Paul Pagk’s painting is not so wise and minimal we like to admit. It is luxuriant in colours, carnal in consistency (4-2-8-3), indefinite or childlike in its strokes (ESP) and sometimes funny in some of these swelling unlikely forms (Between Heaven and Earth).
Against the theoretical and historical pedigree, the ambiguity and richness of this work reminds us that we must be wary of this "little knowledge of association" (Jean-Louis Schefer): a tic as safe as the famous Meetic, which avoids direct relation and guarantees against the alleged danger of the unknown. Tactile, Pagk’s painting requires instead a sensitive contact and without mediation. The meeting is not without risk, the work is not there to provide "an immediate understanding, but the possibility of the unknown". So it is a true blind date that Eric Dupont Gallery invites us to.
Séverine Gossart
My red maybe your orange, even
À en croire la plupart des commentaires, l'œuvre de Paul Pagk relève purement de l'abstraction géométrique – il se situe dans l'héritage du minimalisme américain, pour les amateurs d'étiquettes plus précises.
À en croire la plupart des commentaires, l'œuvre de Paul Pagk relève purement de l'abstraction géométrique – il se situe dans l'héritage du minimalisme américain, pour les amateurs d'étiquettes plus précises.
Cette association n'est guère suffisante. Né en Angleterre en 1962, Pagk n'a que trois ans lorsque son compatriote Richard Wollheim publie le premier article définissant l'art minimal. De 16 à 20 ans, il est installé à Paris, étudie à l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, mais traverse la Seine aussi souvent que possible pour se rendre au Louvre ou au Centre Pompidou. Là, il s'enthousiasme autant pour la peinture classique que moderne, et s'expose aussi bien à Ingres qu'à Delacroix, à Picasso qu'à Matisse. Une véritable boulimie. "Je regardais alors tant de peintres, dit-il, qu'il est difficile de tous les mentionner". Il ajoute : "Je ne peux vraiment pas dire ceux qui m'influencèrent le plus". Car ce qui l'intéresse alors, c'est apprendre à peindre. Observer, étudier la surface des tableaux de maîtres – pas leurs cartels.
Le contact avec le minimalisme intervient lorsque Pagk arrive à New York en 1988. "Un choc", qui l'incite à simplifier ses formes : il n'en reste aujourd'hui que des lignes qui se coupent à angle droit (Red Insertion), des structures géométriques en forme de losanges, trapèzes (4-2-8-3), parallélépipèdes (ESP-the cuban boxer 2) ou pyramidales (3-ways, the Village Green). La réduction est telle que la critique le renvoie aisément à ses prédécesseurs, à Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt ou Dan Flavin le plus souvent. Mais ce que Pagk en retient est essentiellement leur intérêt pour la philosophie merleau-pontienne. Lui qui voulait être peintre dès l’âge de sept ans, a aussi pratiqué la danse classique, et ce n'est pas un hasard s'il se montre sensible à l'idée selon laquelle le corps et la perception sont constituants de notre expérience au monde. Dans le fond, Pagk n'a pas changé. "Je suis fondamentalement un peintre et la peinture est mon sujet", répète-t-il. Ce qui le passionne, c'est toujours la peinture et le rapport au corps qu'elle établit – pas les étiquettes.
Regardez ses mains. Ses doigts et ses ongles portent les couleurs de ses toiles et trahissent la cuisine à laquelle il se consacre rituellement pour préparer sa peinture – un mélange d'huile et de pigments purs dont il conserve le secret de la recette. Son atelier est aussi loin de ressembler à un laboratoire aseptisé. Le désordre y règne. Si les murs restent presque blancs, les pots, pigments, pinceaux, brosses, chiffons, et couteaux mélangeurs s'accumulent sur la table qui lui sert de palette, enduits de multiples couches de peinture dont l'odeur nous fait sentir qu'elle est encore toute fraîche.
Il suffit que l'œil s'accommode quelques instants pour s'apercevoir de l'épaisseur de la surface picturale. Plutôt que d'être monochrome et économe, elle rend visible la superposition de nombreuses couches de couleurs qui ne se recouvrent jamais tout à fait (4-2-8-3). Loin d'être lisse, elle laisse apparaître des fragments de peinture coagulée, des marques de coups de pinceau ou des tracés inlassablement repris (ESP) – elle avoue en somme le processus de création et en préserve la mémoire. Ces subtiles variations de couleurs et de matière jouent avec la lumière et créent des vibrations optiques, qui fluctuent en permanence selon les éclairages. Elles capturent l'œil du spectateur, qui, s'il veut bien se laisser saisir par leur magie, y laissera son corps tout entier. La perception de l'œuvre est telle que "plus on la regarde, plus la peinture s'ouvre et se révèle".
Le trait n'est pas non plus si net qu'il apparaît à première vue. Pagk commence en effet par tracer les lignes de ses structures, puis les entoure, les recouvre de larges plans de couleur, les redécouvre, tour à tour, sans arrêt. La distinction entre ligne et couleur s'estompe, les limites en sont constamment redéfinies. En résulte dès lors une impression de mouvement : le trait frémit, et peu à peu la rigueur géométrique du tableau vacille alors que les structures oscillent de manière indéterminée entre l'avant et l'arrière du plan de la toile, projetées en avant ou inversement englouties par la couleur.
En suspens, ces structures ne sont pas pour autant évanescentes. L'artiste saisit leur matérialité en les accrochant toutes au bord de la toile, comme s'il voulait les ancrer de façon sûre dans le monde physique du spectateur, leur offrant dès lors la possibilité de s'étendre librement au-delà du tableau. Même ce corps jaune étrangement boursouflé, que l'on remarque d'autant qu'il fait ici exception, ne flotte pas. Il n'est pas arrimé au cadre, mais reste irrémédiablement enclavé Entre ciel et terre.
A y regarder de plus près, la peinture de Paul Pagk n'est donc pas si sage et minimale qu'on veut bien le dire. Elle est luxuriante dans ses couleurs, charnelle dans sa consistance (4-2-8-3), indéfinie voire enfantine dans ses traits (ESP) et parfois drôle dans certaines de ces formes au gonflement improbable (Between Heaven and Earth). Contre les pedigrees théoriques et historiques, l'ambiguïté et la richesse de cette œuvre nous rappelle qu'il faut se méfier de "ce petit savoir d'association" (Jean-Louis Schefer) : un tic aussi sécurisant que le fameux Meetic, qui évite toute relation directe et garantit contre le danger supposé de l'inconnu. Tactile, la peinture de Pagk exige au contraire un contact sensible et sans médiation. La rencontre n'est pas sans risque, l'œuvre n'étant pas là pour assurer "une compréhension immédiate, mais la possibilité de l'inconnu". C'est donc à un vrai blind date que la galerie Eric Dupont nous convie.
SéverineGossart
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