Paul Gerard Somers is a designer and artist currently working in Chicago, Illinois. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and his work resides in private collections. Paul makes sculptural objects, videos, and occasionally has been known to participate in live performances. His work is based on a personal investigation of societal institutions, rituals and the exploration of their influence on our culture. He is interested in examining automatic and collective beliefs and how they impact and shape individual behaviors. His work evokes memories and feelings of childhood. He questions the boundaries of masculinity within contemporary society and if and when the toys must be put away. He celebrates the reject and the dysfunctional as a reflection of a part of us. He wants to examine closer the disregarded and find beauty in the disenfranchised. He is attracted both mentally and aesthetically to the proving grounds of manhood, the court, the mat, the racetrack, and the field. These grounds are sectioned off in our world as the ritualistic and sacred arenas to partake in battles to the death, places to kill boyhood by becoming a man. Through the disjointed curatorial groupings of objects, material choices and the finishes applied to them, these memories and experiences reside in his work.