Paul Loughney: Consequences of Competing Narratives - Artist Resume

Paul Loughney: Consequences of Competing Narratives

Paul Loughney continues to compose collages in an intuitive process, attempting to make images a bit like visual hallucinations, a kind of delirium, all the while pursuing that intimate space between viewer and image, and creating an experience that rewards slow looking. His process includes collage, drawing, painting - and appropriation.

Loughney's new series of collages exists in the space between abstraction and figuration, anthropology and storytelling: where belief mingles with magical thinking. For the first time, text and frottage are introduced. Disjointed letters are compressed into spheres as graphic as they are ambiguous. Fractured words seem to act as a metaphor for incomplete thoughts, an inability to fully articulate reality, and the failure of inept language to conjure miracles. His process of frottage is deductive, and is used to reveal elements 'just beneath' the surface. The scratchy removal of printed surfaces creates an eerie echo of an otherworldly image that is, like the fragmented words, intentionally vague. These elements constitute an extension of Loughney's approach to magazines as 'anthropological documents', and of excavating necessary parts in order to breathe new life into such materials.

Many of Loughney's surfaces employ a wide range of printed blacks as a type of 'real estate of allure'. They stem largely from the backgrounds supporting luxury items depicted in magazines - as if such goods exist in a void. Other new characters in this series are dead canaries, the harbingers of unseen danger; vacant vessels, emblems of impressionable minds; imitated camouflage patterns, representing the ego's way of hiding in plain sight; and stars. 

 

Education
2006 MFA, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
1997 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Certificate in Printmaking, Philadelphia, PA

 

Solo Exhibitions
2021 Consequences of Competing Narratives, Vorderzimmer, Brooklyn, NY
2019 Confetti of the Mind, Lesley Heller Workspace, NY, NY
2009 Conversations from the Void, St. John’s University Gallery, NY, NY
2008 The End of Days Are So Yesterday, La Lutta Project Space, Brooklyn, NY
2006 Declassified NoWhere, Seraphin Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2003 BiblioSpace, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2002 Paul Loughney: Monotypes, Numina Gallery, Princeton, NJ

Selected Group Exhibitions
2020 Destempos, Plataforma Artbase, Puebla, MX
Clausura, Circulo de Cuban de Mexico, Mexico City, MX
Studio Associate at Store for Rent Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2019 Take Back the Walls, Rochester Contemporary Arts Center, Rochester, NY
PasteUp, International Collage Exhibition, Universidad de Communication, Mexico City, MX
2018 Small Works 2018, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Curated by Sharon Louden
2017 IT’S A SIGN, Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY, Curated by Enrico Gomez
KRAAAM, Frosch & Portmann Gallery, New York, NY
Let the Drummer Get Some, Peter Freeman, Inc, New York, NY
2016 Paper Pushers, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Curated by Mel Prest & Rob de Oude
Wrap Around 10, curated by Renee Riccardo at AREANA at Suite 806, NYC
Fathers, Brothers, Sons, Spacecamp, Baltimore, MD
PAFA SHOW, Morris-Warren Gallery, New York, NY, Curated by Kathleen Bradford
2015 “so different, so appealing”, Frosch & Portmann, New York, NY
Vices Peculiar to These Eclectics: Contemporary Collage, St. John University,
Jamaica, NY, Curator: Derek Owens (March)
Domestic Ideals: Nostalgia and the Home, Leslie Heller Workspace, NY, NY, 

Co-Curated by: Yan Cheng & Peter Gynd
Something/Nothing, Vertigo Art Space, Denver, CO, Curator: Peter Yumi
2014 Home Ec, Mississippi State University, MI, Curator: Adreinne Callander
The Presence of Absence, Skylight Gallery, NY, NY, Curator: David Gibson
2013 Printed by the Artist, International Print Center of New York, NY
VIBE, Suite 303 studios, NY, NY, Curator: Mary Ann Strandell,
Inside Voices, Parallel Art Space, Ridgewood, NY, Curator: Enrico Gomez
2011 The Art of Collage and Assemblage, Marnie Sheridan Gallery, Nashville, TN,
Curator: Marla Faith 

 
Press
2019 Paul Loughney and the Afterlife of a Magazine, Jessica Licciadello, Bella Magazine
LES Art Night Review, Alissa Guzman, Hyperallergic
2017 Kraaam, Rayan Meersohn, Wall Street International Magazine
2015 Studio Visit with Paul Loughney, Chad Saville, Beautiful Savage
Broken Bodies, Ric Kasini Kodour, Kolaj Magazine
2014 Down to Earth, John Haber, HaberArts
Paul Loughney in New York City, Ryan Fish, Beautiful Savage
2013 Through the Ages: Launch of the Pop Up show Vibe, Fraeulein Magazine
Permanent Collections
Press Art, The Collection of Peter and Annette Nobel, Zurich, Switzerland
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
New York Public Library, NYC
Janet Zimmerli Museum, New Brunswick, NJ
The Brodsky Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Grants / Awards / Artist Talks
2019 Panel Discussion on Contemporary Collage and its Social Impact,
La Fraternidad, Mexico City, MX
2017 Artist Talk, 92nd Street YMCA, New York, NY
Artist Talk, The College of New Jersey, Trenton, NJ
2014 Pierogi Gallery Flat File (inclusion), Brooklyn, NY
2004 Robert Watts Graduate Memorial Scholarship, Rutgers University
Manhattan Graphics Center Scholarship. New York, NY
Lower East Side Print Shop Keyholder Position, New York, NY