P4NEL
Born in Paris in 1999, P4NEL is a French artist and a creative Parisian through and through. He first studied drama, then fashion design at fashion school. It was in drawing, styling and applied arts classes that he discovered a passion for painting, no longer as a spectator but as a creator, and decided to devote all his time to it.
His creativity is fed by his vision, his instinct, his imagination and his complete freedom. Intuitively choosing curves and shapes, and pairing exactly the right colors, allows him to bring out life and a human soul in his works.
It is up to viewers to read their own story in a canvas created by his subconscious. P4NEL does away with the filters that smooth and polish, and make us all “perfect” for a moment. Through the distortion he gives his faces and characters, he makes us feel we can see through souls. P4NEL reveals the character of the people around us, while letting us give them the faces of those who haunt us. He offers viewers the chance to see what he glimpses of the contemporary world.
The many elements that make up his paintings leave no detail to chance: every color, every line carries meaning in the reading of the work, and no space is left empty. All these elements are in perfect harmony with the painter’s mood at the moment of creation.
His works also explore the idea of stepping back. Guided by his emotions, P4NEL steps back between each brushstroke, letting his intuition decide what comes next.
His work is a kind of optical illusion: it links a shapeless, ambiguous visual stimulus to something clear and recognizable, depending on the viewer’s imagination: a human form, facial expressions, emotions. P4NEL wants to explore the human brain’s astonishing ability to “make sense” where there is none.
A path unfolds in the artist’s creative process:
An eye brings a gaze, a gaze gives birth to a face, and the birth of one face multiplies into another.
All these accumulated faces and gazes leave room for imagination, and for each viewer’s own interpretation and connection, through colors and curves drawn on instinct.