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Personal Structures | Time - Space - Existence

European Cultural Centre

Palazzo Mora, Strada Nuova 3659, 30121 Venice

Since 2011 Global Art Affairs Foundation has organised exhibitions as an official part of the Venice Biennial and has chosen to exhibit the painting, Rauric 12, in this year’s event...

     Rauric 12 • Oil on canvas on shaped hardboard, 283 x 255 cm

“In this painting of my apartment we can see everything from the front door at street level, the stairs which pass the nosey neighbour standing in the doorway of the  at below, and into the actual apartment.

As we enter the hallway we can admire the patterned tiles with the light raking across them and see a window opening onto a patio, which is illuminated by a shaft of light, with washing hanging out to dry. From the hallway we turn to our right and let our eyes walk down the corridor passing two open doors, one to the left, one to the right.

We peer through the openings to see what’s within. If we step through the doorways we see even more. Our eyes walk on and we arrive in the front room; a sofa and window to the right, opposite is a balcony from where, should we step out, we could gaze onto the street below. A TV is on boxes in the corner next to another door which opens into the studio where this painting is actually being painted. Next to the studio is the bathroom where a woman is taking a shower. This corridor brings us back into the hallway from where we can enter the kitchen and the bedroom. Adding another layer to the picture is the element of time which has crept in because we can see through the bedroom window that night has fallen, the painting is a mixture of various times and viewpoints, it is a memory of the experience of living there.

The use of perspective in the painting is diagrammatical; we are given a step by step introduction to the whole apartment but it is more than a visual inventory of the contents, it is a story, there are  figures - activity. The perspective is exploited to show more than just one single view and in doing so makes it more understandable and therefore more realistic, even though we know an apartment does not look star shaped and should be one big box divided into smaller ones. The painting is an idea, a concept of reality as the space in the painting can be read in much the same way as a map; a  at surface which relates one place to another and yet this is not an architect’s plan. Perspective positions objects on a two dimensional plane so that the mind can imagine them in three.”

Paul Critchley, b.1960, has been painting irregular shaped pictures for over 30 years. His paintings

are not restricted to standard rectangular formats but are created on individually made canvases made to suit the motif of each work in order to recreate the world, not just as we see it, but also feel it. He often uses multiple perspectives to augment the reality portrayed, as in the painting exhibited.