Allouche Gallery will open its doors to ‘Seeyou’, an an upcoming solo exhibition featuring a new collection of works by Paul Insect.
Hailing from south-eastern England, Paul Insect’s distinct artistic style is a mesmerizing interplay of revelation and obscurity, urging viewers to contemplate their subjectivity in a society marked by a constant stream of information. A true mixed media artist, Insect works with screen prints, wood panels, linen, canvas, video, found objects and more. In “Seeyou,” Insect cleverly includes a collection of painted wall fragments, hinting at his street art roots where walls are the most accessible canvases.
Paul Insect first made a name for himself as one of London’s original street art trailblazers, first in 1996 with his collective, Insect, creating flyers for raves in the East End. He then broke out as a solo artist with his first show in 2007 which was entirely bought-out by Damien Hirst before the opening. Ever since then, Paul’s visual language has become ubiquitous in the contemporary art scene—his meticulously hand painted raster dots create a pixelated effect on his subjects whose details are obscured by large solid graphics and protruding mickey mouse-like ears. In doing so, he is able to manipulate the viewer’s perspective: to hide certain parts of his subject’s faces while revealing others. In a world marked by identity and self-representation, Insect finds power and meaning in anonymous universal figures.
In ‘Seeyou,’ Insect continues to develop his aesthetic language, cropping portraits from different angles while expanding or distorting certain features. Insect’s work is in part inspired by his street art and graphic design roots, creating a trompe l’oeil photocopy effect. Through his process, Insect is able to access that funny feeling that can best be described as recovering a damaged old photograph–at once familiar and uncanny, but always joyful.
About the Artist ~ Paul Insect has exhibited at a number of galleries in Paris, New York, London, Amsterdam, Athens and more; a longtime friend and collaborator of Banksy, he’s worked alongside him at iconic events such as the Cans Festival, Dismaland, and the Santa’s Ghetto project in Palestine. Insect has also created large-scale installations at the Glastonbury Festival (including a 7-meter-tall sculpture) and has recently designed a series of rainbow benches which were left around empty parts of central London during lockdown. He’s also known for his collaboration with the late artist Bäst on “Rubbish Puppets,” in which the artists crafted puppets from found materials over a period of 10 years, with characters often referencing music and graffiti culture, celebrities and cartoons. Insect has exhibited four years in a row in Roger Gastman’s iconic traveling street art show “Beyond the Streets;” he most recently showed with Saatchi Gallery in 2023 with an entire room dedicated to displaying Insect’s work on canvas and innovative rubbish puppetry.
Paul Insect: Seeyou will be on view from November 9 to December 10,2023. An Opening Reception will be held on Thursday, November 9th from 6-9pm at Allouche Gallery, 77 Mercer Street, NYC.