LINKS: Paul_wallington_Paintings
Paulwallington.com
Description of work.
This work was taken from a show I had last year about the phenomenon of “doomscrolling”, which explores how browsing the internet and extensively consuming media creates self-perpetuating cycles of negativity that translate into our lived reality.
The painting technique — where the underpainting seeps through and drips unravel parts of the surface — reinforces the idea of a fractured reality. The face appears to be dissolving, mirroring the fleeting nature of digital imagery and the distortions of memory between what is seen and what remains just beyond our grasp.
This echoes the experience of consuming media in the digital age: an act of looking that is both passive and all-consuming. Set against a bright blue sky, the figure’s isolation is further emphasized, as though suspended in a moment of absorption, disconnected from the ground below.
By translating this moment into oil paint it pulls it from the fleeting, ephemeral realm of digital images and renders it real and tangible. It forces a longer, more contemplative engagement. “I hope some of it makes sense soon” not only captures a physical phenomenon but also reflects on the way we engage with the world—whether through a screen, a lens, or a painting.
Artist Statement
I am interested in the way people create narratives in order to understand history, technology, data and the increasingly complex world around us. As this complexity is boiled down to a set of narratives they sometimes become so simplified “that they bear little relationship to the reality outside”, as Adam Curtis puts it.*
In Curtis’ documentary series “Can’t get you outta my head” he focuses on the individual and individualism. As individualism has grown more prominent, political leaders are struggling to tell us stories of where we were going as a nation because they lost their ability to collectively unite us.** And when they do, their narratives bear little resemblance to reality and instead uniting us, often people feel more lost.
As technology allows us to render scenes from these fictional narratives in ever more believable ways it can be contrasted with figurative painting, a medium that immediately foregrounds the fact that it isn’t a factual but instead a fictional interpretation of reality. This is the starting point for the kind of paintings I’d like to make. Instead of painting being redundant, does its built-in subjectivity make it more potent? How does one make a painting about this moment in time?
Painting is interesting because it takes a world where we are slipping into the metaverse and says to the viewer, without hesitation: ‘this is a lie’.
Biography
Paul Wallington (b.1993) is a painter who lives and studies in Hamburg, Germany where he is currently studying his Masters at HFBK. He graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town in 2019, where he was co- awarded the Simon Gerson Award for Outstanding Body of Work. His work has been exhibited at 99 Loop Gallery and Everard Read
