Paul P. : Amor et Mors - From Venice to Venice Beach, explore art history through the eyes of one of Canada's most compelling contemporary artists

On view until June 11, 2023

OTTAWA, ON, Feb. 22, 2023 /CNW/ - Toronto artist Paul P. is recognized as one of Canada's most compelling contemporary artists. The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) presents the exhibition Paul P. : Amor et Mors until June 11, 2023. The public will have the opportunity to discover for the first time 30 of his works—paintings, prints, drawings and a sculpture—created between 2003 and 2019. Some 15 works from the Gallery's collection, dating as far back as the 16^th century, are placed in dialogue with those of the artist.

"We are delighted to present the exhibition Paul P. : Amor et Mors," said Angela Cassie, National Gallery of Canada's Interim Director and CEO. "Paul P. is a complete artist who immerses himself in all the traditional fine arts and whose work can be found in prestigious institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York."

The works Paul P. creates are made according to the aesthetic codes of the 19^th century. The artist draws on a wide variety of sources—from 18^th-century neoclassical sculpture to the works of James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) and the arch mannerism of the poet Robert de Montesquiou (1855–1921)—and on historically charged places such as Venice, Italy, and its contemporary counterpart, Venice Beach, California.

Paul P. and the exhibition's curator, Sonia Del Re, Ph.D., Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the NGC, take us on a journey through the different periods of art history.

The cornerstone of Paul P.'s artistic project is a large series of portraits of young men that take up the codes of gay erotic photography from the period between the Stonewall riots and the AIDS years. This series follows in the footsteps of several artists who, at the dawn of the 20^th century, defied the dominant moralism of their time and developed a cryptic language to discreetly reveal their homosexuality.

"Because Paul P.'s practice is deeply invested in the past, the exhibition posits his work as windows or portals for time travel to distant and not-so-distant histories," explained Sonia Del Re. "P.'s work around the themes of identity and homosexuality invites us, in this exhibition, to recover little known queer narratives from the 19^th and early 20^th century. For instance, the touching drawing that inspired our Latin subtitle Amor et Mors (Love and Death) is displayed alongside another work by its creator, the Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist painter, Simeon Solomon, a Jewish homosexual, once a rising star of the Victorian art world, soon pushed to the fringes of society for having been arrested twice for homosexual acts."

As Paul P. writes in his article for NGC Magazine: "I am interested in homosexuality as it existed in eras of criminalization and its stratagems. (…) By imposing the secretive visual language of the latter upon the overt sexual material of the former, my art brings together the implicit and the explicit—the irreconcilable and diverging aims of two historical methodologies—in representing homosexual desire in art. Dominant for centuries, the implicit form was conveyed by a set of sensibilities. From a swirl of innuendo, ciphers and keys, to veils and obfuscations, it was as illegible to censors as it was to the uninitiated, allowing queer painting and writing to elude apprehension. It sustained a subcultural civilization and was a wellspring of queer aesthetics."

The 30 works by Paul P. on view in Paul P. : Amor et Mors were purchased by the Gallery in 2020 through the generous support of patron Diana Billes. 

Among the approximately 15 works from the Gallery's collection featured in the exhibition are Annibale Carracci's Study for a Satyr or Faun, c. 1590; James McNeill Whistler's The Thames, October 1903-May 1904; and a 1913 portrait of Robert de Montesquiou by Paul César Helleu.

SOURCE National Gallery of Canada

Media enquiries: For more information, images, or to book an interview, please contact: Josée-Britanie Mallet, Senior Officer, Media and Public Relations, National Gallery of Canada, [email protected]