Multidisciplinary Artist Whose Work Navigates the Intersections of Struggle, Resilience, and Cultural Identity.
Haitian-Born, Georgia-Based Multidisciplinary Artist
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FACE VALUE: WHEN THEY SEE ME
Face Value: When They See Me is a series of emotive portraits exploring the face as image, surface, and emotional terrain.
Drawing from the visual language of comic books, the work employs Ben-Day dots, graphic contours, saturated color, speech balloons, abstraction, and acts of erasure. In some works, layers of paint are wiped away to reveal the image beneath, allowing the face to emerge through removal rather than addition.
To take something at face value is to accept what appears on the surface without looking deeper. These portraits complicate that idea. The faces offer expression without explanation, resisting a fixed narrative or emotional reading.
We look at a face and instinctively begin to interpret it—to assign emotion, character, intention, or meaning. When They See Me turns attention toward that act of looking: what is seen, what is assumed, and what remains unknowable.
The face. The surface. Our assumptions
Drawing from the visual language of comic books, the work employs Ben-Day dots, graphic contours, saturated color, speech balloons, abstraction, and acts of erasure. In some works, layers of paint are wiped away to reveal the image beneath, allowing the face to emerge through removal rather than addition.
To take something at face value is to accept what appears on the surface without looking deeper. These portraits complicate that idea. The faces offer expression without explanation, resisting a fixed narrative or emotional reading.
We look at a face and instinctively begin to interpret it—to assign emotion, character, intention, or meaning. When They See Me turns attention toward that act of looking: what is seen, what is assumed, and what remains unknowable.
The face. The surface. Our assumptions
About the Artist
Born in Haiti and currently based in Georgia. Jean Patrick’s work spans painting, sculpture, and installation, often appropriating everyday objects—such as hoodies, sneakers, durags, neon signage, grease-stained brown paper bags, and discarded Nike and Air Jordan boxes—to transform them into symbolic statements that challenge stereotypes, disrupt narratives, and confront power structures.
Through his work, Jean Patrick positions himself as a culture provocateur—unapologetic, bold, and intent on asserting the transformative power of art as both a mirror and a disruption.