NYAB Event - Richard Paul "Compound Noun"

Richard Paul "Compound Noun"

Theodore:Art

This event has ended.

Richard Paul creates transformative encounters in his photographs. Objects, shiny and appealing, bask in their synthetic beauty in the eye of the camera, and in the (sometimes literal) reflection of their companions, with the slick flawless appearance of a Vogue advertisement. The possibility of meaning relies on a conjunction or compounding of the depicted elements. The relevance, if not the implication, of their conjunction is guaranteed by the act of photographing them. The viewer’s desire and admiration of said objects is diverted by the complexity and absurdity of the aggregated conundrums.

The photographic process can be considered as a different sort of transformation to painting, an instant, rather than progressive one. In Griesssuppe, derived from images in an Austrian cookbook, the elements on the left are literally compounded to produce the elements on the right. In the original book, the ingredients page was much smaller than the finished dish. Paul deliberately removed this hierarchy by making them the same size. There is a tautology in the ‘basic’ set up of the left hand image and the elaborate presentation of the right. Such are the formal demands or expectations of photography. The kitsch edge to the right images – an effect of time and the changing of taste ‐ intensifies this.