As It Happens — Will Yackulic

Will Yackulic's new works are constructions of object and scene, borne from a lifelong devotion to range—especially that of technique and source: a baseball pitcher cropped from a fan's photo, a hazy scene of under-bridge urban vehicle traffic (from a super 8 film shot by the artist over a decade ago), a wizened squash sitting atop a thick, hardcover book painted from direct observation on the artist's desk. Some paintings pull the viewer in through an intense attention to surface and detail while others have an economy of mark making that tilts toward the atmospheric. Their various techniques stem from the needs of the paintings rather than a strict adherence to representation, and their angular, unpredictable and subtly scaled depictions of light convey an attunement to mood that has long since dispensed with style.

Yackulic has been painting for the past five years on small birch panels. Their size and surface allows for quick coverage as well as easy removal—Yackulic has destroyed at least as many paintings as he has exhibited since beginning this serial mode. Thus, some of the paintings have had other images initially present but scraped down. This shows through in paintings like Queens and In the Pines II, but any evidence of the prior picture is absorbed by the layering of shimmer and haze that underscores the painting's overall action and lived-in density.

There is humor and pathos in these works, emerging from both their details and their compositions: from the arch of an unraveling string eyed by a dog echoed in the dog's shadow, to the Pisa-like dissipation of a fire hydrant. Their uniformly vertical orientation invites reading them as portraits, though the only person in these paintings is a stranger viewed from a distance. They may register as diaristic, and they are to a degree, but they are also very much about painting, and what paintings can do to transport us as viewers through the interplay of paint's materiality and the sense of mystery available in enigmatic details. Yackulic works from a deep engagement with the reality of seeing, his as well as ours, while understanding that seeing is not necessarily a singular experience. His paintings are meant to be lived with.

Will Yackulic (b. 1975, New York, NY) lives and works in Berkeley, CA. Yackulic received his BFA from State University of New York at Purchase (1997), and studied at Lacoste Ecole des Beaux Arts, Lacoste, France (1996) and Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands (1995). Solo exhibitions include A Certain Slant of Sunlight, Pt. 2 Gallery, Oakland, CA (2026); New York Paintings, Gern en Regalia, New York, NY (2025); Foreign & Domestic, Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY (2025); Time of My Life, Et al. Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2023); New Weights & Measures, Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2017); and Enigma Variations, Art in General, New York, NY (2014). Selected group exhibitions include The Architecture of Life, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA (2016); Approaching Infinity, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA (2013); Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC (2008); and Landscape Re-imagined, Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York, NY (2006). Yackulic is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant (2024). His work is held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Crocker Art Museum.