Paul Paiement At The Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach

A New Paul Paiement Show will open at the Peter Blake Gallery Laguna Beach, CA.and run September 4-27, 2008. Seems definitely worth a visit. Paul’s work is both visually pleasing and intriguing.
This is an excerpt from the artists statement on his site:

Hybrids are a series of watercolor and egg tempera paintings based on psychological theories of visual perception. These pieces appear to be entomological studies of insects, but they actually explore perception’s effect on judgement. The paintings seek out the boundaries between what we believe to be factual and that which is fictitious.

My work addresses technology’s influence on society in two primary ways. I first consider the fusion of the organic and inorganic through the concept of cyborgs. Cyborgs are a hybrid of machine and organism created to enhance nature. Evidence of these sci-fi inventions exists in robotics, prosthetics, DNA testing, cloning, etc. Secondly, I choose to paint the subjects, rather than digitally render them to display distrust in our culture’s deification of technology….
…It is important that the paintings are rendered in a detailed, almost photographic manner so that the depicted objects are easily recognizable. Currently, the computer is the most precise tool we have. I decided to rival the computer by choosing one of the oldest painting mediums, egg-tempera. This is a medium that demands computer-like precision from the artist because it does not permit revision. Also, painting in a traditional manner allows for precise manipulations and alterations of which current graphic software is incapable. Altering an image to “fool the eye,” as I do, involves issues of representation that photography simply cannot address, even with imaging software and advanced dark room techniques.

I would love to get a chance to look at his work live, and not via computer screen for several reasons, the fist and the most obvious of which I have already stated above. Another reason is that in this computerized world of ours painting and art that has been hand made or touched directly by humans, has a certain warmth to it that is lacking in all computerized art. Paiement’s work however, is so perfectly accurate that it seems to be lacking in that certain human warmth. Although it seems his choices were very conscious, I would like to stand in front of a painting in person and see what the art does for me.

Source: The OC Art Blog