Paul Wackers

I tried to tease out the subjects from the forms in other paintings and then see how they worked or failed in different situations.
I did not actively reference much outside of my studio, just my rocks and plants and ceramics that I have around me as a source.

Interview by Alison Mazur, Drop Magazine, March 2014.

The New York based artist is first of all concerned with figurative painting, which he tends to slightly abstract. Paul’s pictures are engaged in non-places, vegetable landscapes with bookshelves and window ledges, offering an insight in a parallel reality. Deserted spaces reflect an inner perception and remind the beholder of the still-life’s by the well-known Dutch classics e.g. Willem van Aelst.

The regular order of the objects seems to be maintained by the image. Cans, candleholder and empty vases fill up the interior. But at a second glance straight and twisty lines disturb the familiar impression. Formally the geometrical aspects of the composition subsist side by side to the organic elements. The traces of individual interpretation become visible on the plane canvas and on the wooden panel.

By this means the obscure inner impressions melt into the existing phenomena. The paintings of American artist Paul Wackers are intimate; an invitation to meditate. His works is meticulous, complex and almost reinterprets the pictorial repertoire of art history as a whole. Impressionist, minimalist, expressionist, trompe l'oeuil or cartoon-like styles often combine in a single, joyous, post-modern body of work.


Selected works


Exhibitions