Paul Wackers

Paul Wackers
June 9–15th, 2018

The Tennis Elbow
106 North 1st Street
Brooklyn  NY 11249

Paul Wackers

Reviewed by Emily Burns

Paul Wacker’s exhibition at The Tennis Elbow in Williamsburg featured eight paintings, each a different size from quite large to the size of a greeting card, spiraling clockwise around the four walls of the small space, creating a rhythm of scale. Each composition is a mirror of the others, shifting ever smaller with each successive canvas and changing only in the aesthetic details of the objects and their surroundings—a flattened bowl and potted plant on a table. The leaves are mottled and speckled, smooth and dimensional, drab and colorful—the component parts of each element simplified as if they were cut fabric prepared for a quilt. Two fresh blossoms sprout from each plant, and the details invite further study. Varying applications of spray and acrylic paint belie the process of their making—shifting from planned, tape-stenciled quadrants, to areas that are freely brushed or thickly daubed. Wackers’ fluency with the medium recalls acrylic works by David Hockney while evoking the simplicity of patterned still life paintings by Jonas Wood. In the two smallest paintings, shown side-by side, the sister flowers resemble something else—from shiny fried egg yolks in ESFP – The Performer, to pink, dimpled nonpareils in ENFJ – The Giver. In INFP – The Idealist, the flower stems are flanked by impasto leaves, a full quarter-inch of thick paint, like low mesas, glossy on their edges with a dull, matte crust on the uppermost surface—a technique perfected by the artist an employed throughout his oeuvre. The exhibition successfully reinvests in the still life, incorporating Wackers' signature hand in a surprisingly seductive, wonderfully rich series that beckons us to venture further down the rabbit hole of looking.