PIUS FOX | CORAL REEF

Press Release

Pablo’s Birthday presents Pius Fox’s “Coral Reef”, the 3rd solo exhibition of the German painter in New York. These paintings on paper initially read as abstractions that are not objectively tied to reality. As we take them in, we perceive spatial dimensions through relations of color as well as geometries within the frame that, however non-literal, loosely imply a door, window, or room. There is a kind of metaphorical architecture involved.

However immediate the surfaces appear at first glance, the works transmit a sense of depth and dimension - not by perspective and shadow, but through degrees of translucence that reveal visual signs of under lying color and line. By way of this bleeding through we seem to perceive the history of the paintings creation - a visible trace of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint on the paper.

While “Minimalistic” in their geometric strategies, we are never without the authoritative presence of the artist’s expressive hand. By use of a spatula in applying rhythmic staccato marks and textured screens of rich luminous color, the artist’s concern with relationships of chaos and order, static and movement, structure and surface, all unite to activate the picture plane in the balanced tension of a singular gesture.

Pius Fox was born in 1983 and graduated from UdK (University of the Arts) in Berlin with a BA under professor Frank Badur and a master class under professor Pia Fries in 2010. The Berlin painter has had solo exhibitions in Paris, New York, London, and Berlin, and is featured in many international collections across Europe and the US.