A 3 week residency August 2013

Paul Lorenz explored the potential of translating architecture into musical scores.

Through a process of drawing and photography Paul interpreted the materials and structure of the Heygate Estate into a series of line drawings as musical scores. These were then interpreted by musicians during 2 live performances in Hackney Wick and in the middle of the Heygate Estate.

Rhythm Analysis 
 

About Paul

With an education in Bauhaus architecture and fine art, Paul Lorenz has carved an intriguing niche in the international art world: bridging the principals and immediacy of painting and drawing with the logic and detail of architecture. Painting is a balance of physical structure (wood, canvas, paper); visual structure (brush strokes, scrapes, tears, lines); and color. Whether thin and spacial, or thick and elemental, the paint and color are developed to compliment the physical and visual, allowing the painting process to remain the final subject.

Graphite drawings are an important section of Paul’s work. Based upon drafting exercises from his years studying architecture, his drawings depict abstraction in its purest form, geometry. Though minimal in logic, the drawings contain richness in developed space and positive/negative relationships.

The idea behind the graphite drawings is now being developed to encompass sound and composition…audible poetry. Each sound piece starts with a conceptual idea of how math and emotion can combine. The drawing dictates the direction and time, but the composer ultimately dictates the order, the complexity and the flow each musician has to take. Each piece has a distinct structure that every musician is given the freedom to explore within.

Paul was born in Chicago and has lived and worked in Chicago, Berkeley, California and since 2003, Paducah, Kentucky. After graduating from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, he went on to study oil painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the International School of Art in Italy (under Nicolas Carone and Irving Petlin) and the University of California, Berkeley.

Paul exhibits with numerous galleries in the USA and Europe. As a member of Pintura Fresca, an international group of abstract artists, he has exhibited worldwide, with past exhibitions in Australia, Singapore, Austria, England and Sweden. Paul had his first solo exhibition in Europe in 2009 at Galerie Daniel Vignal in Toulouse, France. Paul was the only US resident to participate in the historic Realites Nouvelles exhibition in Paris in 2012, and will be returning in 2013.

Abstraction is not a style, but a state of mind…a way of thinking about action, time and circumstance, confidence and risk-taking, boldness and subtlety.