Eleanor Harwood Gallery is pleased to present Paul Wackers: New Works, a solo exhibition including acrylic paintings on panel and canvas and ink paintings on paper. This will be the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, where the now Brooklyn based artist began showing in 2006. Despite his move to New York 4 years ago, Wackers remains an influential fixture in the Bay Area art scene, with a style instantly recognizable to to his many fans and supporters. There will be a reception for the artist on November 8th, from 4 to 7 pm at the Mission district gallery (1295 Alabama Street, San Francisco, CA 94110).
This new exhibition represents a return to Wackers’s more intimate still lifes with tableaus of potted plants, mementos and personal collectables. His three large scale ink paintings and eleven acrylic paintings are based on the objects that surround the artist in his studio and in his daily life. Hints of the fantastical and playful elements usually associated with his dreamy, disjointed landscapes and quirky display cabinets, can be found in these new compositions. A kitschy print is amplified amidst the organic finish of the stoneware vessels it occupies space with in “All of the Details Are Adding Up,” and the artist’s signature looping, multicolor and texture arabesques make appearance in more than once piece, as well has his improbable planes and flattened fields of vision.
Viewers are invited into the artist’s solitary studio practice via these works to bear witness to the objects and vantage points that inspire Wackers to paint and draw; to capture not only these objects that he loves and lives with, but artist’s own impulse to create with them, to devote countless hours and days rendering their likeness and examining their significance. On the panel, despite the apparent levity of their arrangement, these real life objects (sometimes referred to as ‘characters’ by the artist) remain grounded in their actual physical existence, the narrative of their being, and their psychological connection to Wackers. Like a premier danseur or an olympian, Wackers makes it look easy, concealing the laborious process of his multi-layer painting and masking techniques that render each object individually and distinctly, with an air of nonchalance that allows the viewer to feel as if they have discovered something for themselves.
