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PAUL GABRIELLI
Generally
February
18 - March 27, 2011
INVISIBLE-EXPORTS is pleased to
present Generally, the second solo exhibition of work
by Paul Gabrielli.
Paul
Gabrielli is an exacting deconstructionist sculptor, whose
magical-realist assemblage work comprises a subversive program
of building objects up as a way of taking them apart. In his
earlier work, inspired by both the collage appropriation of
Dada and the rigorous clarity of sculptural minimalism,
Gabrielli transformed the everyday into the uncanny, producing
ideal sculptures, both familiar and more perfect than their
real-world counterparts. In this new series, Gabrielli
continues to focus on ideal objects as abstractions, but has
moved one level further into internal space, yielding a body
of sculpture that interrogates perception and our broken ways
of seeing. The new work is assembled not only from refined
ready-mades but also from ambiguous trompe l’oeil elements
shadowed by imposed obfuscations and everyday items turned on
by unusual desires.
The
work included in Generally explores his vision of
three-dimensional objects as compressed images. These intimate
and meticulous sculptures mirror in the external world the way
those same objects are processed through the eye and projected
into the brain. In this way, Gabrielli transforms the gallery
into an experimental environment at once fictional and
clinical. By juxtaposing two objects of similar purpose — a
re-imagined smoke alarm and an inscrutable fire bell, or a
surveillance camera and a flashlight — he invokes a wayward
world that touches on the romantic and the surreal, inviting
us to abandon our real-world associations and approach those
varieties of items instead as true objects. That is, objects
of desire.
The
shape of infatuation, and its shaping power, feature
especially prominently in Gabrielli’s “toys”—refurbished
elemental items, such as wood, metal, or cloth, showcased
behind plastic windows and mounted on cardboard backings of
various landscapes, as though for display on a sales rack. In
these enigmatic works, mesmerizing fetish tableaux in
miniature, Gabrielli illustrates the lonesome manner by which
we call objects to life through desire, enlisting them in our
emotional lives through a dysfunctional imaginative campaign.
In his work with institutional items, Gabrielli enacts that
same desire, blurring the features of familiar structures as
though by intense focus, close at hand but yet more alien.
When we stare hard at objects, our desire is so strong that we
lose sight of them.
Paul Gabrielli (b. 1982) is a New
York-based artist whose work has been exhibited at
institutions and galleries including the Cartier Foundation,
Paris; BOMB Magazine, New York; 303 Gallery, New York; and the
Verge Gallery, Sacramento, among others. His work is included
in the permanent collection of the Cartier Foundation. He has
an upcoming profile in Mousse Magazine.
Image:
Paul Gabrielli
Untitled (Alarm Bell), 2010
Ultra-cal, plastic smoke detector, ink jet printed
sticker, steel bolt, wood, acrylic, enamel
12 x 12
x 4.5"
Courtesy
of the artist and INVISIBLE-EXPORTS
INVISIBLE-EXPORTS
14A
Orchard Street
(between. Hester and Canal Street)
New
York, NY 10002
T +1 212
226 5447
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