Exhibitions —

april april is thrilled to present Intentions, a solo exhibition by Pittsburgh-based artist Paul Peng. This is the gallery’s second solo project with Peng, and its inaugural show in Pittsburgh.

On the occasion of Intentions, Peng prepared the following statement:

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My name is Paul Peng. You can know me as the artist of this show. Here we have eight drawings on the walls and about twenty-seven drawings on a table. All about thirty-five of these drawings were made on purpose, and these are what those purposes are.

About twenty-seven of the drawings on the table are tracings that I made of my own sketchbook drawings from 2019 or earlier through today of this year (2024). I started making these tracings to think about what it means to copy art and the value of original art, but after making the first few, I realized that I did not care about copies or value or originality at large and was instead thinking about what it means for one of my own drawings to already have been drawn.

One of the drawings on the walls I first made to see a dragon boy with a long and big body, but I then continued to make to see what would happen. What happened was one of the other drawings on the walls. I think these two drawings are about imagination and self-consciousness and setting goals for yourself in the world. What do you think?

Three of the drawings on the walls are studies that I made to see how improvisation actually works.

Two of the drawings on the walls are about art and/or sex.

One of the drawings on the walls is about drawing and/or lust.

Anyways, those are each of the reasons that each of the drawings in this show that I made exist. From these reasons, you should begin to understand what this show is about, which I hope alleviates any unhelpful confusion you might have about what this show is about. I then hope that you can enjoy this show and the drawings that are a part of it.



Best,
Paul Peng.

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Paul Peng (b. 1994, Allentown, PA) lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. He holds a BCSA in Computer Science and Art from Carnegie Mellon University and has also studied classical drawing at Barnstone Studios in Coplay, PA and experimental drawing at the Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI. Recent solo exhibitions include My Subject at Bunker Projects, Pittsburgh (2024) and Heartland at april april, New York (2022). He has been an artist-in-residence with the Brew House Association’s Distillery Emerging Artists Program (2020–2021) and the Ox-Bow School of Art (2023), and will be an artist-in-residence with Stove Works later this year.