Paul Majek (b. 2000) is based in London and received his BFA in Fine Art from the University of Oxford. Ruskin School of Art in 2023. He completed his postgraduate at the Royal Drawing School in 2024
Paul Majek’s work is about ancestral shadow figures in liminal spaces before my time and in the present moment. Staining and drawing on wood allows for a repetitive layering, rendering the surface soft and easy to enter. The process is like creating windows into the subconscious: a fluidity is introduced around the figures, embodying my mind and exploring landscapes of memory, generational dialogue, and spirituality. The marks made with charcoal remain visible and are as important as the painted surfaces.
Paul Majek takes his own blue-hued lucid dreaming as a point of departure to probe the materiality of liminal spaces in his practice. As his painting title Blues behind closed eyes (2021) alludes, he takes interest in what may be “bubbling beneath the surface” of his consciousness.
Painting in oil, acrylic and charcoal on wood panels or canvas, Paul recreates the defined terrain of the subliminal. He recontextualizes woodgrain as a liquid form and imprints Nigerian symbols to support a sense of transparency in his figures and ethereality of imagined spaces. His gentle yet ghostly visual language renders his work “soft and easy to enter”, allowing his paintings to serve as permeable passageways between dreams, death and rebirth. In this selection of work, he references archival family photos of people and spaces only partially known to him. He approaches the archive as its own autonomous language in order to traverse the perforated landscapes of memory, love, generational dialogue, and spirituality.”