The work of Paul Raguenes is much more complex than a brief discussion of monochromes can allow. Fortunately so, because his works can be mistaken for monochromes, although, conceptually, they present a broader reality. They are about perception, experience, expression and analysis. As an introduction to his work, we could juxtapose important statements from the artist and Robert Delaunay.


In 2002/2003 Raguenes said: 
"The light-sensitive retina of the eyes takes in information, which is simultaneously conveyed to the brain. A relentless mechanism. Two worlds are in immediate relation to each other as a result: The external world with its light and the inner light with its memory."
"The soul is transmitted from the invisible past to the visible present."


In 1912 Robert Delaunay said:
"Our eyes are the essential sensitivity between nature and our soul. It is in our eyes that the present take place and as a consequence our sensitivity"
. These two quotations show that the visual perceptions of the world and our interior world, or soul, are immediately connected. The eyes and, by extension, the artwork are the vehicle between the outer and the inner world, but also between the worlds of the artist and the viewer. In fact, this is a very classic definition of art as a means of communication, and we shall see that it fits quite perfectly the contemporary work of Paul Raguenes.
 Raguenes’ three work groups – the paintings, the Monospy series and the Lettered Leaf Layers, as I like to call them - as different as they are esthetically and technically, all have three traits in common: 
First, in all of the works the process of "interiorization," i.e. understanding and feeling the work as a viewer, takes place through reflection and through the process of a gradual perception. Gradual perception corresponds to the layering of pigment, glass or paper.
Second, they all create a tension between a transparent space or spatiality and an opaque surface. This tension illustrates the connection of mind and materiality that is so crucial for art to have an esthetic impact. 
Third, the esthetic impact equals the emotional impetus. While being formally very stringent the expressive qualities of his art are undeniable and thus the question arises as to where this expressiveness comes from.
 Looking at the paintings, which are often titled according to the main pigment used, the viewer will initially behold a monochrome surface. From there our associations are deliberately fooled, thinking of Klein or Ryman. In fact, Raguenes wants us to start questioning our perception and look closer. Upon closer examination one will find indeed that the surface is not a plane surface, but composed of myriads of velvety pigment spheres, each sphere creating a different effect of light and shadow in interplay with the adjacent sphere and dependent on the viewpoint. Going even deeper, one will notice how there is not just one layer of color, but several layers employing several different colors. In extreme cases he covers a bright orange with a dark blue to the effect that the dark blue will be the only apparent color and the orange will only shine through around the edges, giving us a hint of what lies beneath. This layering forces us to reconsider not only what we see, but also what and how we think about it. The interiorization or familiarization with a Raguenes painting is a slow process, similar to the careful powdering of the surface with pigment.
 The tension between a transparent space and the opaque surface is perhaps not as obvious as in a Monospy or in the Lettered Leaf Layers, but it is strong nonetheless. The surface color, frequently a primary color close to black, is of such intensity and the surface structure so matte that it seems to swallow as much light as it reflects. In one moment we can see a colored surface, a clear boundary to our gaze, and in the next moment the boundary gives way to an infinite space. The material allows the mind literally to delve into it.
 This creates a huge esthetic impact similar in intensity to what one would feel in front of a cushion painting by Graubner or facing one of Rothko’s color fields, except that Raguenes’ paintings are much smaller. The paintings through their materiality in particular possess a cruel sensuality: You desire to touch them or to be between their layers and explore the color, but you instinctively know that this will destroy the painting.
 The Monospy has a different effect. The rectangular or square format stays, but it gets bigger, and the pigment is replaced by tinted glass or mirror surfaces. The sculptural and freestanding Monospy is an agent of color intruding into our physical space and thus into our perceptual space much more than the paintings. Here the interiorization through reflection is taken literally. Our perception and our thought process is based on the reflection we get from the judiciously positioned Monospies. Thus they must not be taken as stand-alone sculptures, but as catalysts in a reaction between the viewer and the environment which the viewer and the sculpture share. What is interesting is that they become site-specific if they are combined in a room with the paintings. Otherwise they will work in any environment because no environment is free of color and structure. Even if they were to be installed in the proverbial white cube, the tinted glass and architecturally archetypical right angle would introduce these elements as reference points.
 The tension between transparent space and opaque surface is the most obvious but also the most ambiguous here. It is clear that the tinted glass panes create a transparent space between each other. However, that space is impenetrable to the viewer. You can see through it, but you cannot get inside. With the mirrors, there is an opposite effect. The mirrors are opaque to light and the space between the mirrors is dead black, so to say. However, the space in which the mirror and the viewer are becomes transparent because, thanks to the mirror, you can now look in both directions - forward and backward.
If in the paintings the expressive quality may come from an emotional or intellectual association with a certain color, its stimulus being triggered by the color’s intensity, the expressivity of the Monospies is caused by their experimental and playful character. They cause us to probe our own space and cope with shifts in color perception when we look through the glass. It is like a painting that has dissolved itself into light and space without the substance of pigment. So the Monospies can be said to source its expressiveness from a dreamlike lightness of being in contrast to the physically smaller paintings that are emotionally more imposing.
Just as the paintings are emotional, and the Monospies treacherous, so also the Lettered Leaf Layers are cerebral. They are intellectual works in the literal sense of having to be read to be perceived. The sign and signifier relation to the paintings and Monospies is a direct one. The color is what it appears to be even if there are subjacent layers or tinted shadows; the color and its material are coherent as a representation. In the Lettered Leaf Layers Raguenes uses three superposed sheets of milky polyester foil, and he prints the names of colors on them in seven languages. The trick is that the name of the color is never printed in the corresponding ink color. We can thus read the color orange and connote the color orange in the word "Orange," but the actual color of the letters used to make up the word "Orange" would be blue. While this sounds simple it is very confusing because it introduces a schism between the meaning of the word and its appearance. To add to the viewer’s puzzlement the artist then layers the words behind the veiling milky sheets of polyester. So as we try to comprehend the work, chasing it down layer by layer, the words, colors and meanings get more and more cloudy. Finally, in the third layer, we are granted a comic relief because the cloudiest and most deeply buried word appears in what we think is the appropriate color. But by then, can we still be sure?
 In this series of works the concepts of transparent space, opaque surface and color perception are brought to a sort of culmination because the tension between these three poles is in perfect equilibrium.
 The emotional impetus and esthetic impact are perhaps the least intense because they are not as visually striking as the Monospies and paintings. But the intellectual nature of our preoccupation with these works also brings them closer to language and thought which are both past and present vehicles of the soul.
 The art of Paul Raguenes strikes a perfect balance between emotional expressivity, formal stringency, esthetic validity and intellectual challenge. It builds a bridge between the senses and the mind. It becomes indeed the missing link of communication between the artist, the viewer and the world around us by playing with our perceptions and our feelings, triggered by something as deceptively simple as color.