Patrick Walsh Magic Mountain
04/11/2026 – 08/11/2026
Koelnmesse
Messeplatz 1
50679 Cologne
HALL 11.2, BOOTH B129
NEW POSITIONS
VIP Preview (by invitation only)
Thursday, November 5, 2026, 12 – 4 pm
Vernissage
Thursday, November 5, 2026, 4pm – 8pm
Public Days
Friday, November 6, 2025, 11am – 7pm
Saturday, November 7, 2025, 11am – 7pm
Sunday, November 8, 2025, 11am – 6pm
Press Release
MAGIC MOUNTAIN
The rolling of a cigarette or joint or spliff is a relatively quick affair. In haste or measured deliberation, the rolls lean into the biases of muscle memory, licked and sealed to preserve one’s specific rolling idiosyncrasies. My brother once chastised me for my lack of what he called “post production” edits to my roll, splicing, retouching, nudging to push the tube to its ideal form. In some strange, inverted sense, Patrick Walsh’s sculptures are a lengthy act of post production joint rolling, culled from over 13 years of smokes. His roaches serve as the foundation and unifying thread between the sculptural series on display here, first presented in 2023.
The nubby roaches with their burnt edges (often) form fences that line the perimeter of a domestic scene. Both a burnt incense perimeter spell and a recasting of the rural ideal, the roaches’ grunginess set the tone for the tabletop environment’s construction. The decrepit record of the artist’s smokes become their own small worlds…the post smoke clarity of a world formed by intoxication and the downtrodden dirt filled realm dictated by the aesthetics of the burnt roach and its ash.
Walsh once referred to the series as ranches, and fittingly in a former installation spiders’ webs became electrical wires and one even served as a final resting place for a hummingbird. Unfit for cattle, the ranches, forged through smoke and contemplation, house a different breed. Another former title, Friends Who Gave Me Things, named each work for various friends who gifted the artist the unconventional pedestals (upholstered rack mounts, wooden and foam blocks, small metal platforms). Fittingly, the camaraderie and support of friends with their gifts, puffs and passes become the foundational circumstances for the deliberate crafting of such imaginatively blitzed works.
A selection of such ranches are presented in the Positions section of Art Cologne alongside works referred to as "ghost paintings" by the artist, which use a unique printing process (most comparable to monotypes) amongst other techniques. The ephemeral and newspaper-inspired works mirror the incorporation of the roll, smoke, fire, ash, roach approach to the ranches: reports of the days events are metabolized through Walsh's personal and idiosyncratic rolling method resulting in a sumptuous and layered retelling of the artist's days and process.
Yair Oelbaum, Oct 2026
ARTIST STATEMENT
Magic Mountain, a series of new works for Position, originated in the time in-between, or unaccounted for, in my studio. I started creating these landscapes, or “ranches,” on the backs of my used drawing pads. From these experiments grew a new body of work that explores notions of macro and micro, using familiar objects to unsettle the viewer's sense of scale. Twigs, roaches, dirt, and other debris remain recognizable, as they stand in for fences, trees, and entire landscapes; the work asks for a suspension of disbelief in which something small can suddenly become vast. In the paintings, made in large part with ballpoint pen, newspaper-inspired text, frantic marks, and a process I call “ghost painting”—transferring paint through pressure—I extend this instability of scale, playing with the familiarity of the everyday.
This body of work also marks a shift from working under the name JPW3 to Patrick Walsh. Born John Patrick Walsh III but always called Patrick, I see the change as a way of allowing JPW3 to remain attached to a specific body and period of work while opening a new chapter under the name I have always used.
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STATEMENT DES KÜNSTLERS
Magic Mountain, eine Serie neuer Werke für die Position, entstand in einer Zeit des Dazwischen bzw. der unerfassten Zeit in meinem Atelier. Ich begann, diese Landschaften — oder „Ranches" — auf den Rückseiten meiner benutzten Zeichenblöcke zu schaffen. Aus diesen Experimenten wuchs eine neue Werkgruppe, die Vorstellungen von Makro und Mikro erkundet und vertraute Objekte verwendet, um das Größenempfinden der Betrachtenden zu verunsichern. Zweige, Tips, Erde und andere Überreste bleiben erkennbar, während sie für Zäune, Bäume und ganze Landschaften stehen; die Werke verlangen eine Bereitschaft zum freiwilligen Glauben, in der etwas Kleines plötzlich unermesslich werden kann. In den Gemälden, größtenteils mit Kugelschreiber, zeitungsinspiriertem Text, hektischen Markierungen und einem Prozess, den ich „Ghost Painting" (Geistermalerei) nenne – das Übertragen von Farbe durch Druck – erweitere ich diese Instabilität des Maßstabs und spiele mit der Vertrautheit des Alltäglichen.
Diese Werkgruppe markiert auch den Übergang von der Arbeit unter dem Namen JPW3 zu Patrick Walsh. Als John Patrick Walsh III geboren, aber stets Patrick genannt, begreife ich die Namensänderung als Möglichkeit, JPW3 mit einem bestimmten Körper und einer Periode von Werk verbunden zu lassen, während ich unter dem Namen, den ich schon immer verwendet habe, ein neues Kapitel öffne.