Narwhal Projects is pleased to present Brooklyn-based, American artist Paul Wackers's first solo exhibition with the gallery. Almost Somewhere features a new series of paintings by Wackers, furthering his representations of domestic accumulations and quiet collections: now with soft intercessions on the part of abstraction, there are moments that sigh across his new works with gentle energetic movement.
Presenting small shelf-based arrangements and personal bounding boxes of table edges, Wackers manages to express our desire for objects, as well as the complexity of our relationship with them- as custodians and as collectors. Wackers’s deceptively playful works contain the humour of play between representation and abstraction, all in relation to the small things that fill our intimate spaces. Stripping back areas of paint, letting a colourful arc lazily doodle across a composition, Wackers is also exploring the current resurgence of the abstract, and making a strong play for its inhabitation of our domestic aesthetic moments.
OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, June 13th 7-10pm
Artist Statement
My work is first a response to the world and then a reaction to what it has to offer. Images surround me as abstract concepts, presented by the curious interaction of forms, feelings, and situations. They offer a glimpse into the way the world is constantly being reloaded with opportunities and options for reinterpretations and impressions. It might start with a beam of light passing through a window in the afternoon and within that beam there is the potential of a full spectrum to appear. In my paintings I try to create the feeling of getting lost in the thoughts that are easily ignored or put aside. Many of my paintings will come from moments seen in films or articles read in the newspaper or simply from a walk down the street. The images tend to be of non-places where the specifics of them are not important but how the elements within the picture interact as parts of another world that is sometimes jarringly familiar to our own. It might be seconds away from becoming reality or lifetimes in the past as a fleeting memory.
