Photo: Carloyn Cole for the Los Angeles Times
Paul Villinski was born in York, Maine in 1960, and has lived and worked in New York City since 1982. He holds a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (NY). He has exhibited extensively, including recent shows at The Museum of Arts and Design (NY); The Hillwood Art Museum (NY); the Everhart Museum (PA); The Ogunquit Museum of American Art (ME); Arkansas State University; Sacred Heart University (CT); Carnegie Mellon University (PA); the University of Wyoming Art Museum; Jonathan Ferrara Gallery (New Orleans); Project 4 Gallery (Wash, DC) and Morgan Lehman Gallery (NYC). He has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Millay Colony (NY); the Ucross Foundation (WY); the Djerassi Foundation (CA) and the Villa Montalvo Arts Center (CA).
Historically, his work has been concerned with the transformation of discarded, "worthless" materials into objects of new meaning and beauty. He utilizes materials which have potent, sometimes troubling, associations in their original form, and adds layers of new, often contrasting, meaning through imbuing them with fresh, unexpected form. In this sense, he views the Gulfstream trailer as another "found material", one badly in need of intervention and transformation.
He is represented in New York by Morgan Lehman Gallery and in New Orleans by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery.
