Jean-Paul Winter (b. 1983, Lima, Peru) is a contemporary painter whose work explores time, memory, and the recursive interplay between interior life and external catastrophe. Educated in art and philosophy in New York City, Winter’s practice operates at the intersection of irony, poetry, comedy, and philosophical inquiry, creating images that are simultaneously intellectual and emotional, playful and urgent.

Winter investigates how catastrophe, confinement, and collapse exist both “out there” in the world and “in here” — in consciousness, identity, and the invisible architectures of fear and desire. His paintings often function as immersive environments, large-scale interventions that surround viewers, asking them to confront the simultaneity of destruction and revelation. Influences range from Borges’ metaphysical labyrinths and mirrors to the moral and formal intensity of David Foster Wallace, cultivating a sensibility that is literary, philosophical, and self-aware.

His work engages deeply with social and political realities while remaining metaphysical and poetic. Themes of borders, scarcity, and human vulnerability recur, examining the tension between abundance and deprivation, individuality and collective experience. Winter frequently employs materials that carry their own temporal narrative: copper panels exposed to sulfur, for example, are transformed by chemical reaction and oxidation, becoming timekeepers and witnesses to the work itself.

Winter’s paintings serve as lenses for thought, riddles, and mirrors, offering viewers the chance to engage with existential questions without surrendering to didacticism. His work has been featured in exhibitions in New York City and internationally, and he continues to develop projects that fuse philosophical rigor, literary inspiration, and the poetic urgency of lived experience.