Paul P. - Wired: Online Auction London Monday, April 15, 2024 | Phillips

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  • “Limned with grace and dimmed by velvety effulgence, P.’s oils conjure the recitation and resignification of figures – near erasure, now risen – from queer history.”
    —Alex Bennett

    On the cusp of articulating a thought, gazing directly at the viewer, Paul P.’s sitter is both languid and tender. Swathed in delicate mists that reveal the material quality and spontaneity of the brush, lustrous applications of purple and blue simultaneously conceal the sitter whilst also highlighting his forehead and cheeks. 

     

    A painterly practice comparable to the society portraits of John Singer Sargent or the fictional sitters of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Paul P.’s figures embody an elegiac romanticism. However, unlike the latter, P.’s figures are part of lived experience, drawn from photographic sources located in The ArQuives, formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives in Toronto. Working from images found in gay ephemera, specifically from the burgeoning movements towards gay liberation in the 1960s to the awareness of the Aids crisis two decades later, P. aims to provide agency to his anonymous sitters. A tribute to the queer community, as P. explains, ‘having been born in 1977, I’m indebted to the community of artists who operated throughout this mortal emergency, and the many who died in and around the early 90s as I came into my sexual and artistic awareness’.i Rather than the objectification associated with the imagery’s original context, P. reconsiders these men as symbols of outlawed sexuality, caught in a moment of change, recovering their histories from obscurity.

     

    Born in Canada, where the artist now lives and works, Paul P. earned his BFA from York University, working shortly after as a studio assistant for renowned artist Stephen Andrews. His works are held in significant permanent collections internationally, including, among others, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney in New York as well as the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

     

    iFrancesca Gavin, ‘Paul P., the Artist Making Dreamy Paintings From Vintage Gay Erotica’, AnOtherMag, 18 March 2020, online.

    • Provenance

      Queer Thoughts, New York
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      New York, Queer Thoughts, Slim Volume, 7 November 2019-18 January 2020

    • Literature

      Alex Turgeon, 'Paul P.', canadiart, 12 December 2019, online (illustrated)
      Charity Coleman, 'Paul P. Queer Thoughts', ArtForum, February 2020, vol. 58, no. 6, online (illustrated)

14

Untitled

signed and dated 'Paul P 2019' on the overlap; signed and dated 'Paul P 2019' on the reverse
oil on linen
26.8 x 22.1 cm (10 1/2 x 8 3/4 in.)
Painted in 2019.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£5,000 - 7,000 

Sold for £9,525

Contact Specialist

Louise Simpson
Associate Specialist, Head of Online Sale
+44 7887 473 568
lsimpson@phillips.com

Wired: Online Auction

15 - 24 April 2024