Artist Patrick Jacobs creates dramatic installations that live at the edge of dreams.  Long known for his distinctive, instantly recognizable “porthole” installations, Jacobs has recently been expanding and experimenting with his oeuvre, taking some of his most recognized themes, and transforming and amplifying them into new media.

Jacobs’ first presentation in Italy since 2019, and his debut exhibition in Naples of all new work, the Psychopomp of the title refers to the spirits who guide the souls of the newly deceased as they cross the threshold from one realm to another. In the artist’s work, they do not judge the dead, but merely guide them.  This psychological desire for the security of guidance in the aftermath death represents what Jacobs is exploring as an elemental human need. Variations of the psychopomp as spiritual guide exist in a huge array of religions, both ancient (such as the Greek ferryman Charon to the underworld) and still practiced (the Catholic vision of St. Michael in the role of “angel of death”, taking souls to heaven). Jacobs draws upon these strands of religious traditions, but creates distinct of the elements of the pagan, showing his psychopomps as interwoven elements of nature: human, animal, and plant.  Jacob’s view of the afterlife is less one of hell, and more one of “wonderland”⎯a place to find answers to our questions, to finally understand the desires that unconsciously drive us.

At Andrea Nuovo Gallery, the artist presents newly created work with a sense of both stillness and drama.  Here, Jacobs creates a kind of reverie, soothing but unsettling around the edges.  Comprising prints, wallpaper, and sculpture in a wide array of media, they appear in three distinct settings.  Firstly, the artist creates a “ghost portrait gallery” of psychopomps with backdrop wallpaper and haunted forest ephemera in the form of painted bronze sculptures on pedestals. In the second section, Jacobs moves from the portrait to the landscape, creating his miniature worlds, in this case ensconced with specters in four of his signature diorama creations, especially made for the Gallery’s distinctive triangular space.   In the final section, Jacob’s creations are seen outdoors, as the artist’s imagined miniature landscapes are transformed to a real one, and psychopomp busts appear in the verdant setting of the Gallery’s Neapolitan Garden.

In the first section, the viewer is delighted by ten small, but vivid viscosity prints that appear against brilliantly colored panels of wallpaper, each hand printed with large-scale patterning on rice paper. Here, this “rogue gallery” of psychopomps presents ghostly figures inspired by the natural world, including Swamp Thing, Coral Boy, and Moss Man.  These are presented by Jacobs as classic “head and shoulders” portraits with a writhing and ghostly twist.  These works show a startling, perhaps unprecedented combination of elements of Pop Art (the bold coloration and print making of Andy Warhol) with the elements of the supernatural Gothic that conjures unnerving creatures, here seeming to lurk in a neon nightmare. In his pairing of the prints with unique wallpapers, Jacobs shows an exquisite appreciation for the balancing of color.  The Yves Klein-blue figure of Swamp Thing has staring eyes and gaping mouth that appear as a series of spooky circles, set against an acid yellow background. Bits of the creature appear to fragment from the body and float free, creating a sensation of ghostliness in which the figure is barely held together by a swirling, unseen centripetal force. Swamp Thing is set against rose-hued wallpaper, creating a gorgeous series of color tonalities. Coral Boy presents a similar, but different vivid combination of fuchsia/yellow/mint green, while Moss Man reduces that palette, creating a more restrained portrait in brown/aqua/pink. In, Moss Man Jacobs amps up the Gothic qualities: the daub of yellow reads to the eye as a rising moon, and the small, disembodied bits of shredding moss swirling around the indistinct edges of the figure appear to threaten to become bats.

Other psychopomps in the series appear more friendly, or at least, slightly less disturbing. Yellow Moth showcases the gorgeous veining on the gossamer thin wings of the flying creature, its acid yellow set against a meltingly beautiful aqua blue and a pleasing peach wallpaper. Green Flower Power and Tulip Head are both are imbued with a kind of Pop, manic, hippie energy.  But although all the psychopomps are derived from elements for nature, none is more ominous than the singular Atomic Shroom, which, with its glaring red, manages to combine elements of the ominous modern nuclear era with the natural mushroom form to create a surreal and dangerous impact that recalls the extreme toxicity of Paul Cadmus’s Seven Deadly Sins, 1945-1949.

To create the other worldly effects of his viscosity prints, Jacobs uses a copper plate etching, combined with differed inks of different viscosities.  These different “thicknesses “to the ink, combined with the   plate, create a “halo” effect that is unique to the process, such as can be seen in Swamp Thing. The result is a kind of gassy, or vaporous quality that, combined with the use of bright colors, creates something strikingly electric, or plasma-like.  Each of Jacobs’ prints is showcased in an individualized frame, the composition specifically designed to complement the psychopomp that resides within. These frames are the natural world transformed. Works of art in themselves, they are inspired and designed from found branches and sticks collected by the artist, which are then translated into 3-D prints, reconfigured and custom-painted in contrasting hues that beautifully enhance each piece.

Shown in contrast with the viscosity prints in the first gallery are a series of small, remarkable and brilliantly painted bronzes that pulsate with the rhythm of life. A number of these floral works are aggressively phallic, and several of them, like Burgundy Tulip, appear to have relationships to the prints in the same gallery, sprung into 3-D form.  But here, the whimsy of the prints is reduced, and the figures are more aggressive in asserting their physical claims.  Melting Head is certainly a cousin of Jacob’s Swamp Thing creation, made one degree more gruesome as a sculptural conceit.

One of Jacob’s most striking visual metaphors for the psychopomp, and a centerpiece motif of the show is the owl.  In the garden, Owl Head, presents a ferocious sculpture of mud that simultaneously resembles the cruel, bloody beak of the owl, the iron helmet of an ancient Assyrian, or the sinister hood of a Ku Klux Klan member, as seen through the artistic lens of Philip Guston. The owl appears not only as sculpture, but also as print, and within the largest diorama in the show, Yellow Owl with View of Mount Vesuvius. Here, the artist tips his hat to the Gallery’s location in Naples, tucking its nearby famous volcano into the landscape horizon, where it functions as a still and silent memento mori within the diorama. This presentiment of the unanticipated, but possible explosion creates a frisson of tension is a work, otherwise remarkable for its calm reserve.

In Jacobs’ previous ambitious and detailed dioramas, the artist has resisted incorporating living animals that might have suggested movement, as they might “freeze” his work into fixed position.  But the owl, with its perpetual stillness while at rest, punctuated by occasional lightning-fast flight and hunting strikes, is the perfect animal to reside in his creation: the owl makes sense and satisfaction of stillness. The owl is both more and less than an owl ⎯it is a figment of imagination, a reflective dream. The composition is a study in topographical contrasts and symbolic layers: while in the foreground, the forest seems to curl in upon itself with fallen logs and half bare trees that portent a sinister night of forest sprites, in the middle-distance palm trees beckon, suggesting a tropical paradise, while in the far distance Vesuvius acts as a distant echo of doom.

Jacobs’ forest scenes are both there and not there⎯and translucence is the strategy.  The artist creates not just a forest, but something spectral and ghostlike. The acid yellow of Jacob’s diorama, owl resting poetically on a branch in a dreamworld, is echoed by its presence in Jacobs’ series of viscosity prints.  The shift in tone from elegiac and reflective to pulsating and confrontational is shocking.  It reflects both Jacobs range of skill and his ability to adapt his subject matter to a wide array of forms, in which the same imagery can take on strikingly different meanings.  Works like his “swamp thing” creature, which reappears in print, sculpture, and diorama have a ruggedness and threatening sexual, id-like quality that speaks to primal human desire taken to physical form.

The creatures in Jacobs’ prints are blob-ular, chaotic, and unruly, pushing themselves out against the 2-dimensional aspects of his prints, their manic energy is just barely contained. Jacobs’ creatures are the gremlins in the garden, the polar opposite of the dignified delicacy found in his diorama installations.  Ultimately, Psychopomp is a study in dichotomy: an artistic exploration of how style can bring meaning, and form can scarcely contain the multitudes that reside within the individual.  Unified by theme, the works here are remarkable in their range, and are a tribute to the artist’s imagination, as it is paired with a fine array of technical skills that allows him to execute his vision.   We invite you to visit the interior revelations of one of contemporary art’s most memorable visionaries⎯as he guides your perceptions to the world of the “other side”.

Bartholomew F. Bland, October 2024