Paul P. emerged in the early 2000s as a leading artist of his generation, lacing conceptual rigor with a renewed interest in the sensuality of motifs and materials. His work puts the viewer on intimate terms with the codes of queer representation, drawing on both what is explicit and what is hidden in plain sight. P.'s varied practice spans works on paper, sculpture, and prose but centers on the painted portrait, with pictures of young men cropped to the neck or chest and rendered in a jewel-toned palette. The faces are not taken from life but lifted secondhand from the archive, often copied from a cache of gay pornography that dates to the 1970s—a bright yet fleeting period bracketed by Stonewall and the onset of the AIDS crisis.

The head-and-shoulders view P. favors constricts the libidinal pull of the source image, training attention instead on the figures' parallel expressions of youthful reticence and carnal knowledge. His ease with Beaux-Arts technique also nods to the tacit homoerotics of that earlier period, channeling the “panache and glamour” of Sargent’s portraits, the “mist and murk” of Whistler’s nocturnes. P.’s work embraces refinement and even startling beauty, but that desire is edged with doubt: the men's fates are unknown, and their existence a reminder that certain freedoms may be cyclical, not permanent. P. thus positions his figures, Janus-like, toward layered histories and an uncertain future. "I am searching for analogies," he has said, "and the touching of hands between past and present."

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Paul P. (b. 1977) lives and works in Toronto. His work is the subject of an ongoing two-person show (with Jimmy DeSana) at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin—on view through October 20—and his debut exhibition at Greene Naftali will open in November. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2023); Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway (2022); and Oakville Galleries, Ontario (2022). His work was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and the 2018 FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. Other significant group exhibitions have been held at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2024); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2023); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2021); Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2011); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009).

His work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.