Lola & Pani: Bumps

A pimple-faced teenage boy stares directly at the camera exuding the overconfidence of youth. The world, as far as his understanding permits, is his to be explored and conquered. An algal bloom sparkles in the sun under a thin layer of trickling water exuding an electric green that resonates with the colors of another photograph detailing the bleached yellow hair of a young man. Another boy wears the proof of his sexual conquest around his neck in the form of hickeys like a nouveau riche collector displays a Hirst painting in their living room.

The artist duo Lola Paprocka and Pani Paul are creating visual poetry by pairing the breathtaking beauty of nature on a macro and micro scale and applying the same approach to their exploration of adolescence. An undulating stone sculpture analogous to a buxom woman is paired with a portrait of a young man whose expression is a surrogate for youth confronting an awakening reality they’re unprepared to negotiate. Metaphors abound in their couplets. The cosmic truths of our society are found in this work if you are open to the trains of thought these images spark in your mind. A photograph is a bookmark placed in our lives to remember little snippets of the relentlessly moving world around us. What is kept, what is discarded, and what is ultimately chosen and arranged for public viewing by artists like Lola and Pani invite us to step into their world and pick up the clues within these well-crafted images, hinting at the story they’re trying to tell, but never so definitively that we can’t form our own interpretations.   – Ed Templeton