Paul Pagk

Hionas Gallery is pleased to present the work Queen of Spades and smaller paintings (oil on linen) by the British-American-French artist Paul Pagk. The exhibition titled Queen of Spades is Pagk’s first solo show with the gallery.

Pagk’s painterly language is one of dualities and discovery. While his compositional style communicates a minimalist approach to form, Pagk plays with the flatness of the picture plane (and our perceptions of it) through his use of hand-drawn linework and gestural abstraction, subtle though it may be in places. And yet, it is neither illusion nor process that Pagk is describing in his work. The object that is the painting itself is a form of expression, as are the finely-tuned geometries he creates to relay flattened, deconstructed subjects, each one held in suspension amidst fields of color yet pulsating with life.

The pictorial rhythms inherent in Pagk’s oeuvre are unmistakable. The artist’s brushstrokes, both broad and finite, have a deliberateness that communicates a fluid mind and breathing hands at work. Like architectural blueprints that have shed their skin and rearranged themselves from within, Pagk’s compositions are structurally sound but not in any rigid or mechanical sense. Whatever illusions or sense memories one may experience on the canvas, Pagk’s stated intent is for viewers to “inhabit” his paintings and the spatial constructs therein.

“I am interested in how the act of painting can change our knowledge of painting and engage time and space, body and mind,” says Pagk.

Paul Pagk (b. 1962) is a British-born painter whose career and influence span decades. Educated and trained at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Pagk has exhibited regularly throughout Europe and North America since 1983. He is a past recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Painting, among others. He has lived and worked in New York City since 1988.