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Abstract Inquiry · 2023
Pacman Unfinished
In a private collection
The game that stopped before completion — Pacman as abstract inquiry into what we lose when we leave things unfinished.
Pacman Unfinished (2023) is a playful excavation of nostalgia, disruption, and visual memory. This 40 x 30 inch mixed media painting on wood, part of the Playful Abstraction Collection, reimagines a cultural icon through the lens of abstraction and incompletion.
Built on a carved wood surface, the piece features partially rendered circular arcs, interrupted grid marks, and high-contrast pops of yellow, red, and ultramarine. It’s immediately suggestive of retro arcade design — yet the expected form never fully arrives. It glitches, stalls, veers. The image isn’t broken; it’s becoming.
I created Pacman Unfinished as a kind of visual remix. It reflects how memory — especially of childhood — is rarely whole. We remember outlines, rhythms, aesthetics. Not the logic, but the energy. This painting leans into that fragmentation, finding joy in the undone.
The work connects conceptually with the glitch-art influence of Cory Arcangel, where digital imperfection becomes artistic intention. Like Arcangel, I’m drawn to cultural imagery not to celebrate it, but to question how it lingers, loops, and warps.
Pacman Unfinished is not a tribute. It’s a reframe — a look at how symbols mutate over time and how play can become its own kind of abstraction.
As part of the Playful Abstraction Collection, this piece reminds us that not all resolutions need finishing. Sometimes, the interruption is the most honest part.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 5 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 8 ft or more
- Light
- Natural light preferred — oil layers shift through the day
- Daylight
- Cobalt and cerulean keep this one steady near glass. Its near-black passages are the sensitive part; direct sun flattens them, so a wall that sees daylight without glare is ideal.
Lives best in
Living room 5/5
Pacman Unfinished earns a 5 here because the cobalt-and-magenta fragmentation gives a living room's main wall exactly the restless, conversational energy that makes guests lean in rather than glance past.
Hotel lobby 4/5
The near-black interruptions and glitch geometry read as confident and slightly mysterious at lobby scale, though the 2.5 × 3 ft canvas is modest for a double-height atrium and may need placement below the sightline break.
Details
- Size
- 2.5 × 3 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Year
- 2023
- Collection
- Abstract Inquiry
- Palette
- Cobalt · Cerulean · Near Black · Magenta
- Weight
- About 22 lb
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Samara
- Texture2
- Form4
- Colour range2
- Palette4.4
- Contrast2.9
- Abstraction Quotient-2
