Paul Thorel
17 April - 20 June 2015
pictures
The exhibition includes three important recent artworks produced for the gallery by the Italian-French artist. Manufactured in Flanders, each of these exquisitely woven, large-scale tapestries is based on a digital landscape from artist’s photo archive.
Paul Thorel’s constant intent to focus his gaze beyond the boundaries of traditional photography, made him a pioneer of digital image processing, a technique he began exploring in the early 80s. Although he trained as a painter, the artist soon began experimenting with digital technology in Turin’s RAI laboratories, where he developed a special interest in portraiture and landscape photography. Since then his work has involved processing the initial shot using dedicated programs until they become dizzying examples of digital manipulation sometimes penetrating the realm of abstraction. His generative and proliferative obsession has repeatedly explored the potential of varying formats. This process of recording images on materials that are not always strictly photographic began in 2003 with kouroi, a series of towering gigantographies shown at the Naples Museum of Archaeology. He later experimented with patterns on special papers (as the case with the very recent tapestries of 2014) and the synthesis between photography and painting that he explored with his series of work using natural pigments (2014). Now the artist has embarked on a new expressive journey which sees him interpreting the ancient and noble art of tapestries.
The three digital tapestries on show in the exhibition were created from computer files that have been distilled and altered. The new data were then transferred to numerically controlled weaving looms for the final stage of their realization. The extraordinary result is a complex blend of colours and materials, a perfect example of how time-old photographic techniques can fuse with modern media, fabrics and the artistic mind. The ideal rather than decorative scope of these pieces is capable of transforming the gallery into an unusual cavern of intelligible beauty.
The exhibition will also present ten portfolios containing reproductions printed on Hahnemühle paper of the original images used for the tapestries. Tapestries will remain open to the public until the end of June, 2015.
* * * * *
Paul Thorel (London, 1956) is an Italian-French photographer who works from studios in Naples and Paris. He began exhibiting internationally in the second half of the 80s. His artworks belong to many important public and private collections, museums and institutions. Tapestries is his first solo show in the Guido Costa Projects Gallery.