Trace # 201902, Paul Snell (#011)

Trace # 201902
Paul Snell 120cm x 49cm
Chromogenic Print face-mounted 3mm Plexiglass

Check out Paul's work on Instagram: @psnell1

Paul Snell is an abstract artist who’s digital techniques to explore the possibilities of abstraction and minimalism in contemporary photo-media. He lives and works in Launceston, Tasmania.

The work investigates the transformation of photographic modes of production and the manipulation and exploitation of data to invent new visual forms. By rhythmically repeating, pairing, overlapping, reversing and sequencing through the investigations of specific colour relationships, he seeks a sensory understanding of the physical object. These pieces are not representations of certain realities; they are their own reality.

Snell shares the aesthetic and conceptual concerns of 20th century modernist painters, while taking the 21st century digital image as a material starting point. His work explores and exploits the emotive and evocative effects of colour, both in an ocular sense and a physical one – as we stand in front of these works, our eyes seeking an entry point to the abstract and minimalist compositions, the matte surfaces absorb light and seem to absorb us as well.

Snell’s works seduce and envelop us. His images are abstract, yet also declare a certain concrete recognition of their own material substance. Snell intends to create visually arresting works that allow viewers to enter into a contemplative, or even transcendent state.

Snell has exhibited his work extensively throughout Australia and Tasmania, and selectively in the United States and Europe. His work is held in private and public collections both nationally and internationally including Art Bank, TMAG and the Justin House Museum. Snell has been a finalist in many National Prizes including The Blake Prize (2018), The Geelong Print Prize (2011), and The Sunshine Coast Art Prize (2013). In 2012 he won the nationally recognised Tidal Art Prize and The Flanagan Art Prize and in 2015 he won the Whyalla Art Prize and Morton Bay Art Award.