Cartapesta

Between roughly 2008 and 2013 Paul produces a sustained body of large wall reliefs in cartapesta — hand-pulped paper layered onto plywood backings until it builds into a low, breathing topography. Some are nearly a metre and a half tall; some open into ovals or geometric apertures; one incorporates a small mirror.

These works are the most painterly of his career. Where the peperino and wooden totems are structural, the reliefs are tactile — surfaces you read with the eye but want to touch. A few introduce blue, red, or Klein-blue saturation; others stay white, all the activity in the relief itself.

Considered as a series the reliefs reveal a quiet ambition: to make a sculpture that behaves like a painting, or a painting that behaves like a wall.