Smoke Signals:Paul Fenner

About

In the works of Paul Fenner, we see an artist who has immersed himself in the theatre of the street, filled sketchbooks with furtive glimpses, odd details, moving figures and quickly felt spaces - an observer. Yet, he has resisted the seductive and civilised sensualism of the flaneur impressionist, to become the rag-picker. 

Paul filters and re-presents the flow of modern life, partly as a means of discovering the permeability of the barrier between the self and everyone else; as Paul notes: “Myself and what I am not, converge on the surface”.

 Figures are both drawn from visual memory, carrying hints of narrative and particularity, and from a purely improvisatory energy, responding to the emerging abstract concerns of the painting and the feeling of making each mark. Moments overlap, scale is loosely bound, flatness and space coexist in ambiguous paradox. Perhaps these jumbled fragments could be mistaken for the ravings of a mad-man, if they weren’t so unified by an artist’s sensibility for colour, composition and touch, and warmed by a benign temperament.

Every person is conjured into the painting-space with a sympathetic and non-judgemental honesty, yet they are not simple, or inert, for they are all seem set in motion, un-self-consciously going about their business and we feel that they each have a personal history, anxieties, a sense of purpose or hope which drives them. This is Ensor with the masks off, and yet, not any less mysterious, for in our postures, our behaviours, we can all be outwardly suggestive whilst being inwardly inscrutable even to ourselves. 

In these paintings, Paul presents a slice of the human drama, a momentary cross-section of a dream-like world where everything is totally unexpected and ambiguous, yet just makes sense, with no further explanation. These are paintings to live alongside; they set the mind in motion and invite you to inhabit them, come to know them and reinvent them according to your own imagination. 

Paul Patrick Fenner
Born 1989, Southampton, studied Fine Art in Newcastle in 2011 before attending the postgraduate programme at London's Royal Drawing School. 
 

Mercer Chance Gallery 253, Hoxton Street, N1 5LG

07715816779, info@mercerchance.co.uk, www.mercerchance.co.uk

Please join us for the opening event 7-10pm 20th January 2017