Medium_Acrylic and oil Patel on wood panel

Size_16.75” x 21”

Year_2025

“The New York bodega is such a staple here. Any neighborhood you go to you always have the bodega, it’s like a hub. Always drenched with advertisements, ATM air EBT signs, the occasional mechanical horse. So to me it’s iconic image burned into the memory of anyone who ever lived here, or even just watched a movie about New York. It’s a shrine to New York life. The helmet is a history book. This work asks how much of who we are is shaped by the icons around us, and whether we ever get to exist outside the roles they place on us. How much of ourselves are shaped my the city’s we live in, the celebrities we are influenced by. do we just wear these influences on the outside to protect ourselves from judgment and rejection of our peers. Or do we ever really get to exist as ourselves. 

The man inside is wearing it as a shield. A representation of identity. Weather it’s real or not, it’s the mask he wears to protect himself. To guard his weakness. But it’s also a burden, trapped, living inside a pressure cooker. I don’t like when people say the helmets are about consumerism, maybe it is a little, but not really. That horse has been beaten to the bone. It’s a boring subject to me. I’d say it’s more  of a metaphor for survival if anything. Actually if anything maybe the advertising speaks more to the commodification of one’s self. Something that I find exhausting and have grown to dislike about being an artist myself. He’s a walking billboard, his struggles hidden beneath layers of corporate influence. 

Other interpretations of the helmet paintings are more about the loss of self in the pursuit of success. The suffocating nature of expectations and the way personal identity becomes entangled with corporate influence and cultural symbols… idk.”

Jake Plissken is a Brooklyn-based carpenter and part-time artist known for his offbeat, irreverent aesthetic and distinctive creative voice. Working primarily through visual art, his work often blends humor, grit, and absurdity, reflecting a playful defiance of convention.