Viewers are transported to magical new realities through Patrick Jacob’s exquisitely constructed works, small-scale dioramas embedded in gallery walls, each one visible only through a circular window of magnifying lenses. Beyond the glass await lush green fields, tiny apartments or colourful clumps of mushrooms, designed, as the artist explains, “to go just far enough to convince you that they are what they are.”
Jacobs was born in California and studied at the West Florida University and the University of Klagenfurt, Austria, before completing his MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago. Drawing on a diverse range of influences – from historical landscape painting to modern-day chemical companies’ pest control brochures – he builds captivating miniature worlds, manipulating our sense of perspective, infusing the everyday with a touch of fantasy.
Since the early 2000s, Jacobs has participated in group shows across the USA, as well as in Mexico, Italy, Japan, UK and France. He has completed residencies in Vermont, New York and Munich and his work has been presented in solo exhibitions in New York, Miami and London.