4833 rph — Explore and Discuss

Between 2006 and 2008, Paczos painted landscapes of cracked pavement and the cramped patches of grass and shrubbery caught between industrial areas in the outskirts of Chicago. Studying the overall exhibition, from the landscapes covering the walls to the painting of a possum carcass ironically displayed flat on the floor, the eye seams together the canvases to create an overall sensation of being in this barren scene. One can almost feel the brisk breeze and smell petrol mingled with the far-off scent of the chocolate factory.

Man’s presence is undeniably felt through the remnants of chain-link fences and the soaring Chicago skyline in the background. Yet in Paczos’s paintings, there are no men. This creates a discernible silence and sense of the empty and alone. These spaces once were frequented by men, but lay unused and forgotten on the edge of the community. It is a familiar scene, comforting in its familiarity, yet confrontational in that these spaces are often overlooked or casually ignored. Out of the abandoned of Chicago’s landscape, Paczos crafts a visual poetry, elevating the ordinary to the sublime.

Paczos paints with intense and meticulous accuracy, adamantly showing only what he saw. If an element of his view disintegrated or disappeared during the course of painting, for example, the decay of a dead possum, Paczos stopped painting it immediately, leaving the interrupted beginnings of what was once there. Paczos’s acceptance of the impermanence of the landscape is undeniably similar to wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic of transience. The viewer is confronted with the changing landscape and quiet of abandonment, revealed in quiet beauty.

Andy Paczos: Abandoned Demolition
January 18, 2009 - April 5, 2009