Jack Hanley Gallery East Hampton is excited to present Everything Energy, its first solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Paul Wackers.
Paul Wackers creates intimate and inviting still life paintings, filled with household items, ceramics, plants, and abstract decorative objects. The works are vibrantly colored and linear precision is balanced by texture on the canvas. The abundant scenes are often framed by a grid system, with shelving, fences, and windows creating frames within the paintings.
The artist typically works from his own experiences and pulls objects from everyday life. Wackers’ paintings serve to heighten his understanding of these objects and their meaning. Through the process of painting, many familiar items become completely abstracted and fantastic while others remain representational. This, in turn, draws into question the viewer’s experience of these items.
The paintings are colorful and alive with scenes from domestic life. The richness of the artwork is further enhanced by the use of different forms of paint application, with splatters of acrylic paint and spray paint present throughout. The combination of painting techniques and bursts of color paired with the abstract and figurative imagery from different everyday places imbues each work with an incredible amount of energy.
Paul Wackers was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1978. He received a BFA from Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Recent solo exhibitions include The space we take at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco, California (2021); IN A HOUSE OF SHIFTING FORMS at Alice Gallery in Brussels, Belgium (2019); and Silent Language at Galeria Impakto in Lima, Peru (2018). Recent group exhibitions include Earth’s Debit at Public Land in Sacramento, California (2022); Twenty Year Anniversary Exhibition at Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York (2022); and Nature Morte at The Hole in New York (2021). Wackers’ work can be found in collections including MIMA Museum in Brussels, Belgium. Wackers lives and works in New York.
For more information please contact Kendall Kane at kendall@jackhanley.com