Guillaume Paturel: “Under Construction” | June 13 – 26, 2013
Opening reception: Thursday, June 13, 2013
Under Construction, Paturel’s focus is on our mental images of cities in a 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.
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 new birth.
Guillaume Paturel, a French artist, has been an image-maker of world-renowned architecture. After making thousands of digital architecture image projects, Guillaume Paturel moved to New York to work on his virtual illustration of the World Trade Center design. As for his paintings, Paturel began his work with the classical use of painting and illustration collage in the 90s, and since then he has been engaged in various creative projects. But he once promised a painting exhibition to his ill father in order to reconnect with him. Guillaume’s father inspired him in many ways, and Guillaume felt that he still never had a really deep relationship with his father…
Movement and change are the main inspiration for Paturel’s works. He creates his large paintings on wood and canvas using supplies from hardware stores rather than from art venues. Because he literally builds his artworks – his goal is to reach a physical architectural project.
