Paul Wackers: The Space We Take
Eleanor Harwood Gallery is thrilled to present The Space We Take, our seventh solo show with Paul Wackers.
The body of work in 鈥淭he Space We Take鈥� was painted during the pandemic. In his previous work, Wackers has often focused on interior spaces and still lifes. Interior scenes are not a new subject matter to him. However, the paintings in this body of work do have more longing and confusion in them, and a certain compression of space that offers both a sanctuary and an accounting of objects in his domestic sphere.
Having worked with Paul over the course of fifteen years we鈥檝e seen shifts in color palettes and mark-making techniques. This body of work contains brighter colors than usual, more joyful and warm colors, a transformation that can be read as an artist replacing the vividness of external life, usually filled with friends and lived in-public, with adding color to his studio practice. What we have all lacked in saturation in our personal lives, he has painted in, both for himself, and for us.
The last body of work that had a similar shift in color was in 鈥淪low Wave鈥�, 2016. That body of work had more heat to the colors, a visualization of spending time traveling near the equator, and being influenced by a shift in climate and the aesthetics of objects in the various countries he traveled through. Paul鈥檚 interior palette, manifested in the works from 2020 and 2021 turn out to be radiant, perhaps in contrast to how he was actually feeling during an intense lock-down in New York City. He said that he had only shared fifteen meals with other people during all of the pandemic, many of those concentrated on a small trip to upstate New York. This detail is striking, people with children or housemates may have shared up to three meals a day together, a concentrated intimacy and frequency that was both lovely and maddening, and for those people without families or significant others, the pandemic was a social vacuum.
These paintings come from the end of the social spectrum populated with few other people. The painting 鈥淭he Space We Take鈥� has two plants growing side-by-side, situated in an alcove. They jockey for space, and somehow still thrive, not in the ground in soil, but grow in pots dependent on someone to water them. Nurture is necessary for all of us, be it water for plants, or contact for humans. The growing plants are a metaphor for the space we all need. The title of the painting and the show is active and somewhat abrasive. The 鈥淪pace We Take鈥� refers to the six feet of distance necessary for safety, the feeling of being forced to move off a sidewalk when someone maskless walks in your way, making it their space as you move aside. But it also points to the space we need to grow.
Wackers鈥� continued and deepened accounting of his personal space shows us someone making a safe space for themselves, but also being reminded how that space is precious and that what we do in it or with it matters.
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Eleanor Harwood Gallery is thrilled to present The Space We Take, our seventh solo show with Paul Wackers.
The body of work in 鈥淭he Space We Take鈥� was painted during the pandemic. In his previous work, Wackers has often focused on interior spaces and still lifes. Interior scenes are not a new subject matter to him. However, the paintings in this body of work do have more longing and confusion in them, and a certain compression of space that offers both a sanctuary and an accounting of objects in his domestic sphere.
Having worked with Paul over the course of fifteen years we鈥檝e seen shifts in color palettes and mark-making techniques. This body of work contains brighter colors than usual, more joyful and warm colors, a transformation that can be read as an artist replacing the vividness of external life, usually filled with friends and lived in-public, with adding color to his studio practice. What we have all lacked in saturation in our personal lives, he has painted in, both for himself, and for us.
The last body of work that had a similar shift in color was in 鈥淪low Wave鈥�, 2016. That body of work had more heat to the colors, a visualization of spending time traveling near the equator, and being influenced by a shift in climate and the aesthetics of objects in the various countries he traveled through. Paul鈥檚 interior palette, manifested in the works from 2020 and 2021 turn out to be radiant, perhaps in contrast to how he was actually feeling during an intense lock-down in New York City. He said that he had only shared fifteen meals with other people during all of the pandemic, many of those concentrated on a small trip to upstate New York. This detail is striking, people with children or housemates may have shared up to three meals a day together, a concentrated intimacy and frequency that was both lovely and maddening, and for those people without families or significant others, the pandemic was a social vacuum.
These paintings come from the end of the social spectrum populated with few other people. The painting 鈥淭he Space We Take鈥� has two plants growing side-by-side, situated in an alcove. They jockey for space, and somehow still thrive, not in the ground in soil, but grow in pots dependent on someone to water them. Nurture is necessary for all of us, be it water for plants, or contact for humans. The growing plants are a metaphor for the space we all need. The title of the painting and the show is active and somewhat abrasive. The 鈥淪pace We Take鈥� refers to the six feet of distance necessary for safety, the feeling of being forced to move off a sidewalk when someone maskless walks in your way, making it their space as you move aside. But it also points to the space we need to grow.
Wackers鈥� continued and deepened accounting of his personal space shows us someone making a safe space for themselves, but also being reminded how that space is precious and that what we do in it or with it matters.
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