Paul Thuile

From the catalogue Spuren-Tracce, Kunstmuseum Erlangen, 2021

by Sophia Petri

Paul Thuile draws on paper and MDF panels and captures human living spaces such as rooms, stairwells and desks – deliberately fragmented and reduced to outlines. He usually has a personal connection to these spaces. In a way, they are memory images that are closely linked to the places but also to the people. Recently, he has been drawing more and more often in places that are about to be demolished or remodelled. There, the artist places ephemeral drawings directly on the walls of the rooms. For a moment, they re-appreciate the place before its remodelling in art. And then they are destroyed together with the place. What remains is a photograph of the drawing in the room, which is made by a photographer under Paul Thuile’s precise instructions and which he thinks about at all times during the drawing process. The exciting thing is that for Thuile, this photograph is not just a medium for memorising the artwork that no longer exists, but that the photograph and the drawing on the wall form a unity. They enable a completely new way of looking at the space in the picture. What is striking about Paul Thuile’s drawings is the fragmentation, the special perspective and also the slightly vibrating lines. This is particularly strong in the wall drawings, where he stands very close to the wall and only draws what he can reach within the radius of his drawing hand. This creates oblique perspectives and distortions. It becomes exciting when compared with the photograph, which on the one hand is usually taken from the front and on the other hand does not always capture the template of the drawing in space.