Paul Guillemette at Metro in 2008

Paul Guillemette works as an art handler by day in one of Los Angeles’ most famous packing firms, Los Angeles Packing, Crating and Transport. At L.A. Packing crates are opened by the handler, the paintings removed and hung on the wall in anonymous houses. The lost pieces of wood in “Finished Wood” begin at this ”finishing point”, born as monuments to salvage and beauty.


Guillemette has created a remarkable show solely from the material fragments of his day job. The best work in the show utilizes the incidental accidents made by puncture and inconsistency of surface to full optical effect. Staple holes are lit from the inside and create glowy terrains of wood grain caused by the varying thickness of the plywood. A pencil shaving encased in amberlike resin sets off the diagonal wood grain in a highly inventive way. Similiarly the mailing address of the crate transforms the word, “Los Angeles” into pure visual texture.


Ironically the work ethic of the artist perhaps limits the focus of the artist’s statement. The show suffers from a lack of editing. There are too many paintings shoved into a relatively small gallery space which dilutes the strength of the most interesting work. There is however something to Guillemette’s quirky painting style, but it feels like the intentionally painted elements are after thoughts and separate statements from the purely abstract marquetry and patchwork of crate stenciling evidenced in the rest of the show.

As an art handler Guillemette comes across “lost wood’’ set adrift by time and circumstance. He transforms the objects of his daily chores into reliquaries for disembodied art. The pieces themselves bring to mind a conversation I once had with Los Angeles gallery directory Inmo Yuon. He told me that in Los Angeles, the back of the painting was as important to the collector as the front. Guillemette’s work has a similar kind of logic. After all if the crates are this beautiful imagine how great the contents must be?