𝗜𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝘂𝗹 "𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗦𝗸𝘆"

Curators: Marian Grau & Jan Leo Grau

At Illimar Paul’s solo exhibition two worlds meet – the black-and-white graphic art of the 1970s–1980s with its political message and the colourful works in the artist’s own technique of the 2020s, which the artist paints onto paper through silkscreen meshes. Paul’s early serigraphs and ink drawings were completed at a time when global tension was tangible – the arms race, uncertainty, the threat of nuclear war. Decades later, different tones appear in his graphic watercolours: softly pastel, calm, and in their own way poetic. But this does not mean that the world has changed in the meantime. Conflicts repeat and develop, political and economic crises continue, and the world is still endangered and fragile. Only the artist’s viewpoint on life and creative work has changed.

Paul observes conflict and harmony as different expressions of human structure, and the artist’s multilayered oeuvre, in its coherence, has an effect that reflects the essential nature of the world and in some sense is even hope-giving or brings colours into gloom.