Paul P. Par Temps Gris

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is delighted to announce 'Par temps gris', the second Parisian solo exhibition by the Canadian artist Paul P., who is based in the French capital. The title of this show quotes the title of a painting by John Singer Sargent, "Venice Par temps Gris".

These words refer to more than just the silvery grey of the graphite drawings that Paul P. executes with the meticulousness of an engraver, or the vaporous grisaille of the smoky-hued atmospheres in his watercolours and oil paintings on paper; they also express the emotional dimension that lies behind these images. These portraits of young men, and of two women, in indoor and outdoor settings, captured in a sensual pose that is a mixture of nonchalance and melancholy, illustrate expectancy and waiting, the suspension of time.

The almost Arcadian scenes of nudes in landscapes, the erotic expectancy of languorous figures, are all imbued with a silent, distant atmosphere which, for all the aestheticism of the image, also conveys a muted danger.

As François Jonquet writes in the catalogue accompanying this show:

'The threat is not directly present, it is suggested, but we are 'in gray weather' here: immersed in an abstract universe, a no-man's-land inhabited by grave-faced boys, shot through with a causeless sadness, with a premonition - who knows? We are in the antechamber of a possible tragedy.'

This mood is deliberately distilled by Paul P., who subtly transforms the anonymous figures he finds in the gay magazines of the 1970s and resuscitates through an aesthetic inspired by the paintings of Sargent and Whistler, in an atmosphere reminiscent of Proust.

Paul P. graduated from York University, Toronto, in 2000, and has exhibition in many group and solo shows since 1999. He was seen at this year's Montreal Biennale, and currently has a solo show at The Power Plant in Toronto.