By layering and juxtaposing contemporary images onto old, Stephenson is continuously working to build upon stories and perspectives in his work, as though he is simultaneously “DJ-ing” with each of the paintings themselves, offering a new look at artistic collaboration across time and space
London based artist, Paul Stephenson, creates his work through a form of painting called Sous Rature. The definition for this technique, involves the crossing out of a word within a text, but allowing it to remain legible and in place. Stephenson elevates this further, through his remixing of old original works of art into something new.
Most often this involves superimposing contemporary imagery directly onto antique oil paintings. By layering and juxtaposing new images onto old, Stephenson is continuously working to build upon stories and perspectives in his work, as though he is simultaneously “DJ-ing” with each of the paintings themselves.
The identity of the first artist of the oil paintings is always known and this allows a form of collaboration or dialogue between Stephenson and the original artist, and with the oil painting itself which stands in for the original artist acting as a quasi-persona. The combination of the photographic and oil painting in the work constructs dialogues between the two images as the viewer’s eye waivers between them.
“Instead of using a blank canvas I take original artwork (not prints or multiples) created by other artists and erase parts of them. The result is destructive and creative, a forced collaboration, iconoclasm; image breaking in the literal sense and what constitutes graffiti is neither the inscription nor its message but the wall, the background, the surface; it is because the background exists fully as an object that has already lived, that such writing always comes as an enigmatic surplus, that is what disturbs the order of things.” – Stephenson.
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