Jeffrey Paclipan, Star Spangled Banner, 2017, mixed media, puzzles on canvas, 60 x 48 x 8 in
Jeffrey Paclipan: Puzzling World
ON VIEW: November 11, 2017 - January 13, 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, November 11, 6 – 9 PM
Atlanta, Georgia – HATHAWAY is proud to present Puzzling World, a solo exhibition by Jeffrey Paclipan.
Jeffrey Wilcox Paclipan was born in Balibago, Philippines in 1967. Raised into a military family, he has relocated in a variety of states including California, Missouri, Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska and Florida. He currently resides in College Park, GA. Although Paclipan was offered a Douglas Wyoming Kurtz Andrew Scholarship and Sheridan Wyoming College Scholarship in 1985, he decided to relocate to Alaska with his family from 1985-1987. He attended International Fine Arts College, Miami, FL, from 1987-89 where he received an AA Degree in Commercial Art. As a self-taught artist, Paclipan has predominantly worked with nontraditional materials since 1990. He viscerally works with discarded and or marginalized materials and gives them greater meaning.
Paclipan has participated in juried, group, and solo exhibitions with galleries and festivals in Florida, New York, South Carolina and Georgia. Paclipan’s mixed media collage submission “Salvador Del Mundo” was highlighted in a Miami Herald art review of the 36th Hortt Memorial Exhibition, Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderale, FL, in 1994, “Novae Traditiones” Seven Approaches to Visual Expression Group Exhibition, The I.P. Stanback Museum, South Carolina State University, 2001, as well as exhibiting at The Atlanta Financial Center.
My work incorporates mixed media on canvas, wood or toys; creating a textural and dimensional world. Marginalized materials found or discarded whether with beads, confetti or puzzles are combined together in layers, to create a visual stimuli. As a self-taught artist my works vacillate between high brow and low brow art. Relying less on refined results and more towards a natural, spontaneous and less restrictive, sometimes contradictory, way of expression. My work relates to how I cope with societies expectations of conformity, and references the fact that we are all works in progress and we all come from different perspectives. I am less concerned with crafting something for the sake of beauty- but to create a visual emotional connection and response of familiarity from within.
The puzzle paintings are experiences of undulations and movement. When one views the works, wave-like surfaces ebb and flow with the energy of swirling pieces. Made from puzzle pieces swirled and massed into forms, the works are more sculptural then paintings. Breaking out of the two-dimensional surface they appear to be alive, like topographic models of mountains beings formed and reformed or as eternally restless bodies of water. These relief-like sculptural pieces are on some level, a metaphor for the experience of overturning marginalization. Using puzzle pieces, which are usually made to fit in a confined order, I flip the concept of the jigsaw puzzle from an association with logic and order to express intuitive, chaotic energy and exuberant freedom.