PERSONAL STRUCTURES

20 APRIL 2024  UNTIL  24 NOVEMBER 2024

THE VENICE BIENNALE, THE ART WORLD’S MOST PRESTIGIOUS EXHIBITION OPENED LAST WEEK.

PAUL FRANCIS YGARTUA 

PRESENTING HIS DYSTOPIAN SERIES – A DREAM COME TRUE?

TIME  SPACE & EXISTENCE

“It is a great honour and privilege to be invited to the Venice Biennal Art Exhibition 2024 Personal Structures – 20 April until 24 November –  to be received and acknowledged in the world renown Venice Biennal.”  Paul Ygartua

“We appreciate all of Paul’s production and the intensity of each piece we saw on your website and believe your presence at the Venice Biennale would be a positive and stimulating fit within our exhibition.”  MACAELA & TEAM,  ECC, VENICE, ITALY

Personal Structures: Beyond Boundaries is one of the 60th Venice Biennale satellite events, organized by The European Cultural Centre Italy – ECC ITALY taking place in parallel with the main Biennale, from April 23 to November 27 2022. Distributed over three venues, Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora, Marinaressa Gardens.

“Delving into the challenges of global migration and the intricate web of national identities, Personal Structures emerges as a vital artistic dialogue, transcending borders and reflecting the complexities of our interconnected world.”

This is how Sara Danieli, Head of Art at ECC Italy, describes the seventh edition of Personal Structures. The biennial art exhibition, organised by the European Cultural Centre (ECC) in Venice, will welcome visitors from the 20th of April until the 24th of November, 2024 in the historical venues of Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora and Marinaressa Gardens. Press previews and openings take place on the 18th and 19th of April.Considering the complex dynamics of our global society, Beyond Boundaries was chosen as the guiding title of Personal Structures 2024. The collective show will present itself not only as an exhibition, but also as a journey that will cross multiple boundaries – geographic, political, religious, cultural and artistic. While some physical and conceptual limits can mean comfort and safety – our own bodies, the walls of our homes, the lines on the road – the exhibition will aim to shift these constraints, to investigate what is beyond in order to see it from a different point of view.

By bringing together more than 200 artists and multidisciplinary creatives from 51 different countries, Personal Structures seeks to provide a rich tapestry of perspectives on the pressing challenges of our time. T?he protagonists of this year’s group show will be renowned as well as emergent international multimedia artists, photographers, sculptors, performers along with art and academic institutions and galleries, who will articulate their visions, reflections, and responses to the multifaceted aspects of today’s society.

Vienice Biennial 2024 Official Site

A DREAM COME TRUE? 

Imagine a world where man’s ultimate dream and greatest threat come together. In this version of Paul’s dystopian future, not only does AI run our everyday lives but it has found a way to make our greatest dream come true. It can now take on human souls and allow us to live forever. In this piece, entitled ‘DREAM COME TRUE?’, you can see the souls of people represented as faces on top of cubes. They are travelling on a massive conveyor belt that is headed into the unknown. But are these the faces of souls who have finally had their dream come true? Is this really what they have been waiting for all this time? Or is living on forever perhaps not their ultimate dream after all? Paul explores the contradictions of human nature. How can man’s single greatest desire end up so fruitless and leave us so powerless? He is also urging us to question the dangers of the power of AI in our future worlds. The cold blue hues and angular edges convey a sense of bleakness, whereas the contrasting red suggests barbarity. The future for these souls does indeed seem desolate. The cubes they are placed upon evoke the prison within which they are forever destined to stay. The expressions on their faces elicit emotions of fear, hopelessness, surrender, as they head towards their eternal life in a world controlled by Artificial Intelligence. Without a doubt we are wondering whether this is really their dream come true?

Paul has been exploring themes of human destruction and dystopian futures since the 1970s. His first piece, ‘DEVASTATION IRA’, was painted in Paris in 1974 and was later made into a reproduction. Living in the 14th Arrondissement in Paris, Paul heard the news about the Birmingham Bombing of 1974. 21 people died, 182 injured, it was significant for him as he had family there. It was his mother’s birthplace and where his father had met his mother during the Second World War. The next morning Paul painted ‘DEVASTATION IRA’. He had never painted anything like it. It depicted a war destroyed human figure, dismantled in the midst of a field of bodies.

He has also always been fascinated by extraterrestrial life and intelligence. His first painting surrounding this theme, ‘CELESTIAL BEINGS’, was painted in Cannes, France in 1979. It illustrates alien figures in an underground cave playing in a live concert. The celestial subject matter has been another recurrent one over the past 50 years.

During the pandemic, he started the series of paintings ‘UNDER SIEGE’ representing the covid virus taking over the world alongside another series of paintings ‘HAZMAT SOLDIERS’ and ‘FRONTLINE WORKERS’, dedicated to the heroes of 2020.

Paul has a special capacity to react spontaneously to everything that is going on in the world around him. Through his brush, he translates his emotions onto the canvas with vivid colour, liberated brush strokes and continuous movement. His constant questioning of the world has always urged him to explore new styles of painting and is one of the driving forces behind his extraordinary body of work.