Born into a family of artists, Dominique Paulin worked as a painter in parallel with her medical career. It was not until 2008 that she presented to the public works she has always painted. She gradually edged forward in the eye of the public.
Self-taught, she soon developed her own style, always searching new artistic approaches, by mixing oil, pastel, ink on various materials (cosmetics, ash, walut stain,...) in a non-figurative style. The material being worked gives shape to a world in creation, where gesture and light structure the canvas.
Dominique Paulin guides us towards light, via her personal perception of man’s unease and the fragility of his presence on earth. Yet, there are no
human figures in her works, just a presence.
"Dominique Paulin, a world song"
by Christina Burrus
curator of Spacialités exhibition
Two places, two roles, two eyes. A modest apartment-artist’s studio, where lively chaos abounds, a very smart and rigorous doctor’s surgery: Dominique Paulin, painter and doctor,
diagnoses both man and the world.
With the same doubts and the same dazzling intuition, sometimes the same certainties: the same « inspiration ».. She has an innate sense of mystery and the researcher’s determination for « healing » …an infinite compassion.
The arts of healing and of painting, are they not one and the same?
Brilliant strokes, richness of matter, poetry of emptiness: in the beginning there were the elements, the sky and the earth, water,
air and fire. Genesis or the Apocalypse, are we at the beginning or the end of a world, at the beginning or the end of a life? Yet we do know
we are in the realms of the essential. An immense battle lies ahead, it is ours: the battle for life.
She cuts a small figure in front of her canvas, slender, spinning around, the wind in her hair,
Dominique Paulin has fire and gracefulness. So secret, so discrete, that often one must bend an ear to hear the words from her very soft, deep voice. « Listening » she says, «caring for others and the expression of my inner world, are indissociable». She is a doctor with a thesis in nuclear biophysics, treating according to the precepts of Hahnemann, the 19th century
practitioner who identified illnesses according to his patient’s stories and the account of their symptoms, she is very attentive to human psyche, she is a doctor who regulates.
When asked the question «Why scientific studies?», the daughter of the famous designer Pierre Paulin and the great niece of the automotive stylist Georges Paulin, the only doctor in a family of artists, tells us that when she was sixteen she showed her father a drawing and asked him:
— What do I do? Architecture or medicine?
— You’ll do medicine.
So she studied medicine and never stopped drawing. And one day « I decided to show my work, there was no more room to
store it ».
She is a painter who regulates.
She is a painter-doctor before an immense organism that is the world, like Gulliver’s body, she opens it to us, its wounds, its pain, its sleep, its powerful vitality.
She is a painter who warns, who reacts. Her writing is immediate; she paints very quickly, she builds fires from all types of wood: ashes, micas and walnut husks are mixed with pigments, oils,
acrylics or pastels. She is a researcher, an inventor, without art school training, she moves ahead guided by instinct alone, with the brilliant vision that is born of urgency, anger and amazement.
She paints what is menacing, what threatens us. And she paints what carries us, which is uplifting. She speaks of Fires in Russia, of Fukushima, Tsunamis, Nuclear power and uncertainty, and
she speaks of Desire wandering in the mist, the Dreamer in an uplifted state, the Breaking of light, she looks for the Other World in a ravine of shadows. What ascends from earth meets
with what descends from the sky in a misty, yet precise dream.
This mist is her world. Her landscape is profoundly melancholic, profoundly silent, tender and bright behind twilight scenes, filled with intimate hope. From our ashes a greater love will arise. Anguish and hope walk on the same void’s edge. But this
void is not empty. It is what will become… waiting for metamorphosis.
Dominique Paulin has too often observed life
under the microscope for her to see the world without seeking life behind the inert, future behind desolation. She searches for limits, for the limits of the end…she stands on the edge of the
underworld, and in finding the beginning she finds the beyond.
The original DNA double helix draws us into a circular movement, replicating to infinity, and time, which we thought had stopped, becomes life’s breath once more - time, a moment in terrible suspension, is on its way again, stretching, to let light pass through.
Du, Dunkel aus Licht, says the poet.*
EXHIBITIONS
2022 Biennal Art Venezia, 2/4 to 27/11 Palazzo Mora
Simane La Rotonde Castle , 04150 16/8 to 30/9
2021 Nuit Blanche, Ateleier du Coudray
2018
Librairie d'Arcurial, Paris
"Sand Metamorphosis"
2017
Festival TO GAETHER , Carreau du Temple, Paris
2016 Nuit Blanche, Paris, American Cathedral
Seven Hours Happening with Didier Lockwood violins, Bruno Fontaine, piano
Joël Grare percussions, Sara Orselli from the Carolyn Carlson's Company,danse
Yves Giry Poestry, dress from Marc Audibet, sculptures lamps from Gabriel Beghi
Arthotèque de Saint Cloud, France
Exhibition
Librairie d'Arcurial, Paris
2015
Artist residency in Hyderabad INDIA
Solo Exhibition, Kalakriti Fondation
2014
Solo Exhibition
Forcalquier 04300
2013
Quintessence, exhibition organized by the French Embassy for the "Bonjour India" Festival, New Delhi, India
Vivre dans l'espace, Mairie du 15eme arrondissement, Paris, France
2012
Lithographs exposed in Artcurial bookstore, Paris, France
2011
Spacialités, Dominique Paulin and Michel Kirch, Espace Pierre Cardin Evolution, Paris, France
Naples mon amour, Galerie Utopia 440, Naples, Italy and Galerie Sponte, Paris, France
2010
Dominique Paulin and Claude Mollard, Galerie Sponte, Paris, France
Life in color, Group exhibition in Shangaï Doland Museum of Modern Art, China
European Art Exhibition Lille Art Fair, Galerie Sponte
Ecce Homo, Exposition collective Manège Royal, Saint-Germain en Laye, France
2009
Salon de l’environnement, Paris, France
Face à face, Galerie Sponte, Paris
Visiblia, Galerie Utopia 440, Naples. Italy
2008
Abstraction Sensorielle Espace Cardin, Paris , France
