About Daniel Paul
Daniel Paul was born in 1984 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. A graduate of the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague in 2012, his utmost inspiration is shape, weight, luminosity, structure, reflection, and smell. Daniel is an artist aiming to discover the potential of all the elements above and explore its possible approaches gradually to its mastery.
Hello Daniel. When have you understood you wanted to become an artist?
I have known it since I was a small boy. Then I became fascinated with 3D printing as a tool to bring a digital model into physical reality. So today, I create in virtual space. After graduating, I worked in the entertainment industry, focusing on classical craft and digital technologies. A life-transformative experience in 2019 led me to start my independent project, Turbofolk sculptures, which expresses my perception of the current world we all share, yet some of us are destroying.
Can you briefly describe your technique and tell us what drives you to make art?
My driving force is technological development. So today, I create both in virtual space and using traditional techniques.
A life-transformative experience in 2019 led me to start my independent project, Turbofolk sculptures. With it, I may express my perception of the current world we all share, yet some of us are destroying it.
The realistic figural works may seem abstract, but each tells a specific story based on ethical and moral dilemmas. They call for an ambiguous interpretation that depends on the viewer’s perspective, which can be volatile—much like mine.
Which artist primarily inspires your work? And is there something else, outside visual arts, that keeps you motivated?
David Altmejd and Xooang Choi are my favorite source of inspiration as artists. To create, I need to find space for the creative process to observe the changing world around me.
How would you like people to engage with your work?
I want people to see my work as a record of a specifically entertaining intellect process rather than a dogma. “Sometimes I suffer from the feeling that people have stopped valuing life, displaced death, and even stopped appreciating the things they produce or consume. We abandon wisdom to satisfy our pride and throw ourselves in solitude instead of mutual joy. At the expense of experiencing the present, we have recourse to the idea of surviving in the future.”
Spread the word! Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?
The Turbofolk project connects arts and ethical issues reflected in my artworks.
TURBOFOLK
(application text)
The figural sculpture collection Turbofolk is a moralistic call to reflect on today’s consumer-oriented world. The exhibition portrays the social problems associated with religion, gender, racism, ecology, and similar topics and opens questions such as using power and the freedom perception. It ironizes people’s connection to fleeting things and draws attention to a fact of separation from profound life experiences.
The way to express a given topic is always through a man and its corporeality. By using the characteristic symbols for each of the described issues, we obtain a person as a typus, a generic representative of a particular trend. We communicate attitude and approach to the world through the human body, its attributes, and positions. The bearer of the message is here sóma; péxis, the body radiated by the soul, is missing.
The final formal perfection and artificiality of the sculpture are intentional. It depicts the body as a product. It needs to be perfect for its purpose, any deviation from this idea is undesirable. Physical flawlessness has become a social norm. However, can such a conception of the body speak of beauty?
Just as a sentence acquires meaning only after understanding the relationships between individual words, the sculpture of this collection reveals its message only when understanding the used symbols used in their relationships. The sculptures are not an interpretation of specific stories but a leitmotif of a given theme, in which several moral positions collide. The messages are multi-layered and require a careful perception of the links between the used elements.
The 3D printing method
The creative process combines work in a digital environment and classic handcraft. The model created in the virtual space of a computer 3D program transfers to reality through a machine, while the other elements such as puttying, grinding, and painting follow a manual mode.
To also visit his website, go here or follow him on Instagram.
