WANTED
Paul Abraham is born in Switzerland. He completes his higher education in Paris, at the Duperré School of Applied Arts in graphic design and the School of Decorative Arts. He finishes his training in New York City, at the School of Visual Arts. He is a recipient of the Conseil des arts et des lettres of Quebec and the Canada Council for the Arts.
“As a teenager, I dreamed of the great outdoors of North America, I owned the complete collection of the adventures of Lieutenant Blueberry. A western Comic drawn by the French Artist Jean Giraud alias Moebius. My idols were Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone and I went to college dressed as a Buckaroo. Today, I still don’t have a horse, but I’m still a cowboy at heart.”
“My art is about storytelling. My works are fragments of stories, successive scenes or key images, snapshots taken in the movement of life. I use the comic books syntax for its narrative capabilities, for its universal stylized and symbolic content.”
“I have developed my own “pop art” visual language. Based on a reinterpretation of the symbolic landscapes of America which watered my youth: wide open spaces, Westerns, Cinema, good and evil, superheroes and outlaws, freedom to which I juxtapose my European culture.”
The comic book aesthetic allows me to codify the images as a charade. A play on symbols and icons based on the concept of disruption, to create an unexpected, sometimes provocative image. (By doing so) I illustrate the stereotypes that highlight the contradictions of our societies.
