Paul Pagk

Biography

Paul Pagk was born in 1962 of a Czech father and an English mother, who was also a painter and with whom he visited museums from an early age.

He studied at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (France) from 1978 until 1982, year in which he founded the « 55 rue des Panoyaux » space in Ménilmontant (Paris) - a working space for artists located in an old foundry. One year later he met the French gallerist Jean Fournier who became one of his first collectors.

In 1984, he exhibited at the galerie Jean Fournier in Paris and at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. In 1987, he had his first solo-show at the galerie Jean Fournier, and exhibited also at the art center Crédac in Ivry (France) and at the Parc Floral of Paris. That same year, he was awarded the Prix Fénéon (Sorbonne University, Paris). In September 1988, he moved to New York where he had found an artist loft to rent, and what was supposed to be a one-year stay became a long-term one in New York. That year, he discovered the triple exhibition of Blinky Palermo, Imi Knoebel and Joseph Beuys at the Dia Art Foundation in Chelsea (New York), which had an important impact on his work.

In 1990, he was included in the exhibition “Three Painters” curated by Tim Nye in Soho (New York), which included also American artist Jacqueline Humphries and Corean artist Huyn Soo Choi. In 1991, Tim Nye opened a non-profit space “Thread Waxing Space” in Soho with Paul Pagk’s first solo show in New York. In 1993, the second solo show of Paul Pagk at Thread Waxing Space was accompanied by a catalogue with a discussion between Tim Nye and Paul Pagk. The show received a lot of attention from public and media.

Since then, his work is regularly exhibited in France, United States and Europe.

He received several awards: Prix Fénéon (1987), Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1998), Sheldon Bergh Prize (2000), Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant (2012), Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2012), and Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2014).

Work

American art curator Franklin Sirmans, in a catalogue essay titled "The pleasure principle" published in 1999 for Paul Pagk's show at art center Le10neuf du CRAC in Montbeliard (France), writes: "His heavily build up surfaces (Pagk often works on a single painting for three months) reemphasize the quality of the paint itself, and serve to expand the parameters of the visual space... It is also the visual density of the paint that is reminiscent of spirituality in a way that references the baroque quality of early Dutch painting...What strikes me after continually encountering his paintings over the last couple of years is the earnestness of the artist's endeavor which actually takes you on an art historical ride from Russian Constructivists like Malevich, to the deductive abstractions of Reinhardt and Newman in the 50s, to the conceptually-influenced monochromes of Ryman. While these canonical references allow the viewer to connect the dots in a fashion suggestive of thematic painting, that is not necessarily the case. The artist's style is thoroughly unique avoiding any burdensome odes to modernist or postmodernist longing."

When reviewing Paul Pagk's show in 1993 (Artforum International), art critic Donald Kuspit commented: "Paul Pagk's abstract paintings show that the renewal of painting depends upon the renewal of what is fundamental to it: primitive sensory experience articulated through texture and elementary structure. The former is innate to surface, the latter marks it as the universal ground of presentation (14).

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