5. Les peintures de Paul Pagk nous font entrer dans ces
labyrinthes de la perception à l’échelle de la nature entière.
Mériam Korichi (2019)
Philosophe, metteure en scène et créatrice des Nuits de la philosophie
1. Different rhythms
pervade the space. Five 2 One and Motet rise up before us as we
enter. The drum beat of
the first and the extremely precise measures of the second are electrifying. Our
perception is
challenged. Nocturnal notes of Straight, No Chaser rise
in the air. The sound is dark, radiating density. It is an invitation to journey through the
night when rhythm becomes space and transforms into a brilliant
structure that we behold. Confronted by the
painting Straight No Chaser, we cross the narrow strait, entering
the
opaque depths of moonless
nights. We enter the black night enveloping a crisscross pattern of geometric paths, strangely familiar
and yet unknown. The paintings send synesthetic signals to the entire body. The
paintings are in harmonious proportion with the viewer’s body and
yet, at
the same time, they are overwhelming. They are
ready to
engulf the viewer, to take hold, to reduce us to fundamental sensations.
Magnetized, we feel the tension between the stretching lines and the brilliant
colors, evocations of the
sun or the sea or a
mid-summer dawn. The
colors possess the
space, radiate out,
make the volumes glow. They are pure density, without any need for explicit
outlines.
This pure chromatic density empowers the lines to stretch,
tensely
and nervously,
as if with clenched fists, and to intrude into the bright, endless painting, building
dynamic structures. With TwoBetween, we see the
oceans deploy on the
circuit of their rotation between the two one-sided polar disks. We are riding
the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island, in the radiant pink evening. These
stretching and forking lines, making their mark, parallel and circling,
offer an escape from our customary notion of time as linear. Such time, made up by calendars,
quantified and divided,
has us
believe that it
flows only in one direction and then
disappears. This notion is, in fact, an illusion. The timelines
that materialize in Paul
Pagk’s paintings
come approach a very intimate perception
of Time. Our eyes touch the
mists of time and, as proof of time found again, we see the ancient lotus
flower bloom under its primary Egyptian name, Seshen, filled with sun and
demiurgic meaning.
2. There is a short story by Borgès
entitled “The Garden of Forking Paths”. It has a complex structure that leads to the idea that the story told in it
is a labyrinth comprising
all possible narrative options. Borgès’s fiction, generous and open, simultaneously embraces the
infinity of possibilities. Taking all
of them in, it creates a plurality of futures, a plurality of times that multiply and branch out. For
Borges, the ultimate fiction is the library of all libraries, the book
of all books, the labyrinth of all labyrinths, following a reticular,
paradoxical, and
impossible logic. For Borgès, writing cannot but end up in the breath of a
simple invocation, an astounding vision that is necessarily fugitive, gone as quickly as it appears, destined to abolish
itself while it suggests the
totality of everything. As if the process of writing had to rarefy itself, to
lead to a state prior to an initial Big Bang, in order to invoke the
inexpressible infinite plurality of things, in all of its profusion and simultaneity.
3. As we contemplate the forking patterns and the chromatic
profusion, the temporal interceptions and the spatial propagations of Paul
Pagk's paintings, we experience
the ways in which painting is different, and the power and affirmation contained in it. These paintings convey an
immanent sense of existence, of non-fading away. Nonetheless, the
paintings compel the
viewer to take into account a sort of presence that does not have the distinction we customarily confer to things.
Paul Pagk’s painting challenges the
domination of conceptual perception of the mind. It offers a perceptual
and sensory experience that engages the body and the mind at
once, dispensing with the usual dissociation between intellectual comprehension
and bodily sensation. Rational
discernment and sensory perception become conflated as the eye absorbs color as
matter imbued with intense chromatic and sonorous qualities. The undeniable
presence of these paintings opens the door to an infinite perceptual continuum.
More impressively yet: within the space of a dozen paintings, Paul Pagk forces
us to get off the beaten track of linear time and to engage all of our senses
in experiencing space in a very particular way. Painting is the great catalyst
through which we experience time and space - not only in the here and now, but
in all of their past and future dimensions. But it does not mean that the
perceptual continuum that painting activates is homogenous. This is the reason
why Paul Pagk, recently, started to make apparent the beginning of his painting
process. If painting has no beginning and
no end, it contains a multitude of times: ephemeral, interrupted, recurrent, lasting, lost, future, stationary, or whirling like Spinning Top.
4. All these different notions
of time are
conveyed by the spatial experience embodied in the
paintings presented here, and you can easily loose your way as the mind and
body merge in contemplation. You can get completely lost, suspended in the
painting – yet still remain very much in this world. Multi-sensory and
syncretic, this work is an anti-separatist manifesto, an invitation to a wholly
different experience of space: a space that is non-directional and non-bounded,
but deeply real, dense and vast. You see through the eyes of Horus,
poised in the midst of celestial blue of sea mixed with sky. And from this
moment on, you know that the union between spatial chromatism and thin yet
persistent reticulation suspends any preconceived idea, allowing you the
freedom to think and feel. It
enables you to go back to the linear course of utilitarian time without
forgetting the brilliant lesson
of Anaphora: perhaps, life is only jazz after all, evocative of Duke’s music, some of it written and
some improvised, unmoored from reference points which should never be a
restraint in any case. Points of reference are distinct and clearly marked
indications, like Pagk’s 3 Circles, but they are only discrete elements
of a life score, a score that is largely unwritten, a paradoxical labyrinth.
5. Paul Pagk’s paintings invite us into these labyrinths of perception
which are as open and wide as Nature itself.
Philosopher, stage director, and creator
of the Nights of Philosophy
accompanying book with text Labyrinths of Perception:
english:
http://www.blurb.fr/b/9353973-paul-pagk-interaction
french:
http://www.blurb.fr/b/9345341-paul-pagk-interaction
LE FIGAROSCOPE April 10 to 16, 2019
LA COULEUR MUSICALE DE PAUL PAGK
PAR SOPHIE DE SANTIS
On plonge dans les toiles abstraites de Paul Pagk comme dans une piscine d’eau douce. L’éclat des pigments purs qu’il broie lui-même à l’huile apporte cette profondeur vert turquoise, jaune soleil, rouge vermillon à ses très grands formats .... Le regard s’y perd avec délectation. À peine distrait par des lignes tracées à main levée, qui semblent répondre à un schéma mathématique. Mais Paul Pagk assure qu’il n’en est rien. Tout est intuitif, jamais tracé d’avance. Il serait plutôt influencé par les notes dansantes du jazz. Rendant même hommage au Duke avec des portées de musique dansant dans l’espace. On pourrait identifier aussi des circuits de microprocesseurs ou même des dessins d’une architecture imaginaire. Influencé par les maîtres de l’abstraction (de Mondrian à Ellsworth Kelly), Paul Pagk, 57 ans, installé à New York, connaît la musique. Comme dans un chant choral, ses monochromes se font écho en toute harmonie.
https://www.lefigaro.fr/arts-expositions/la-couleur-musicale-des-toiles-mathematiques-de-paul-pagk-20190414
THE MUSICAL COLOR OF PAUL PAGK
BY SOPHIE DE SANTIS
"One plunges into Paul Pagk’s abstract paintings as though into a freshwater pool. The radiance of pure pigments - turquoise green, sunshine yellow, vermillion red, all hand-ground by the artist in oil - brings depth to his large scale paintings. The gaze wanders, lost in delight; barely distracted by freehand-drawn lines that seem to follow some mathematical formula. Paul Pagk insists that there is none: everything is intuitive, never pre-planned. He might rather be influenced by the dancing notes of jazz, even paying tribute to the Duke with staves of music dancing across the painterly space. One could also identify microprocessor circuits or even drawings of imaginary architecture. Influenced by masters of abstraction (from Mondrian to Ellsworth Kelly), the New York-based 57-year-old Paul Pagk knows the music. Like in a choral composition, his monochromes echo in complete harmony.”
