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Jay Batlle is a figurative painter, sculptor, printmaker, and draftsman based in New York City for the last 25 years. His work finds inspiration in foodie culture and the absurdity of late-capitalism over-productivity. Batlle's work combines a unique blend of comedy and beauty to process the foolishness and vulgarity of the modern world.
Through his poignant and witty paintings, drawings, sculptures, and performances, Batlle explores “the good life”—success, fortune, and an abundance of sensual pleasures—and the gulf that exists between this idealized life and the reality of our own.
A recurring theme in Batlle's work is humanity's futile pursuit of an unattainable lifestyle, expressed through self-portraits that feature recurring motifs such as chefs, waiters, flowers, women, elegant soirées, luxury brands, alcohol, food, and money.
Batlle’s work has been featured in several publications including The New York Times, Art In America, New York Magazine, The Art Newspaper, Huffington Post, Interview Magazine, Elle, French Vogue, The Boston Herald, Artinfo, Art & Auction, and Frieze.
Batlle’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including The MoMA PS1, Metro Pictures, Miguel Abreu Gallery, Esso Gallery, Casey Kaplan, Nyehaus, Andrew Roth, Paul Kasmin, Feigen Contemporary, Thomas Erben, The Chelsea Museum, The National Academy Museum, Exit Art, The Dorsky Gallery, and The Whitney Museum, in New York City.
In Bloom: Fleur De Sel Variations In Fifteen Courses, Jungle Press, NYC (2024) Tête-à-tête with Leon Reid IV at the Saint Ann's Rotunda, Brooklyn, NY (2024), The Trouble With Having An Interior Designer For A Mother Part II, The Corner Gallery Andes, NY (2023). Closed For Business, Museo Nacional Bellas Artes, Concepción, Chile, (2018-2017), Closed For Business, National Museum Of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile (2017), Salad Days, Villa Mensa, Turin, Italy (2015), Parties Of Six Or More, Norfolk Library, Norfolk, CT, (2013), Parties Of Six Or More, Nyehaus New York, NY (2012), Free Lunch, Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile (2011) Cutting Out The Middleman, Nyehaus, New York, NY (2009)
RECENT GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
Doomed and Famous: Selections from the Adrian Dannatt Collection, began at Miguel Abreu Gallery, NYC, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, U.K., ended at Galerie Pixi-Marie Poliakoff Paris, France (2022-2021), FOOD SEX ART, MoMA PS1, Queens, NY (2017), Self: Artist in Their Absence, The National Academy Museum, New York City (2015), Lonely Fingers, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany (2013), Swell, Metro Pictures, Nyehaus, & Petzel gallery, New York City (2010).
Batlle was a skater kid who could draw. Growing up in Southern California, he never set foot in a contemporary art museum or an art gallery before entering college. In high school, he played water polo and was the team captain while also being into the band Minor Threat. He practiced copying the Impressionists, as well as Van Gogh and, of course, Dalí. Batlle believed that you were considered skilled if you could replicate an image accurately. It's how most artists begin their journeys.
Batlle's earliest memories of making art are creating rubbings of headstones with his Grandfather in Upstate NY. His mother was an interior designer, and she rearranged the furniture so often that sometimes he would come home and feel like he was in the wrong house. Batlle's father was the top car salesman for Rolls Royce and Bentley, and he once had the opportunity to be part of a parade that broke the Guinness World Record for the longest consecutive line of Bentleys. His stepfather was a truck driver who paid Batlle in Del Taco bean burritos to help him drive. That’s how Batlle managed to save enough money to pay for art school—through trucking.
photo credit: Graeme Mitchell
Batlle received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998. During his time at U.C.L.A., he took studio classes with Roger Herman, Meg Cranston, Jim Isermann, Thad Strode, and John Baldessari. One of his earliest performance works, "Spiderman’s Dick," was developed in Paul McCarthy’s New Genres class. Batlle was the artist-in-residence at De Ateliers 63 in Amsterdam from 1998 to 2000, where he met Rita McBride, Steve McQueen, Marlene Dumas, and Jan Dibbets.
"Jay Batlle’s alternately hilarious and unsettling entry, titled “Spiderman’s Dick,” is a description of his participation as a student in Paul McCarthy’s Beginning New Genres course. What begins as an earnest attempt to make a 10-minute video piece ends with Batlle on the ground dressed in a small boy’s shredded Spiderman costume. This unscripted malfunction—the inadvertent tearing of the undersized costume at “every seam” while being worn—becomes the central event in Batlle’s project and unleashes for him an array of associative childhood memory. In his words, “That’s when I remembered the car show, meeting my hero, and the lost childhood I was trying to regain.” - The Brooklyn Rail, Norm Paris
still: from Spiderman's Dick 1998
While working as James Welling’s studio manager in New York in 2000, Batlle established his own art studio in Long Island City. His first solo exhibition, Ten Sculptures, premiered at the Esso Gallery in 2002, located in Chelsea, NY. Batlle's sculptures utilized recognizable architectural forms such as the gasoline station and the fire escape, but subverted these familiar structures by manipulating their scale and material. This distortion altered the use and meaning of institutional icons, transforming their language and our perception of them.
Esso Gallery, NYC, Ten Sculptures 2002
During a year abroad in France, he had his first solo exhibition in Europe, "'The Trouble With Having An Interior Designer For A Mother" at 1000eventi gallery in Italy. Batlle used different media to 'draw' memories of his youth spent in Orange County, California. In New York, knowing how to express dissatisfaction with one's life is almost an art. California, on the other hand, invented the 'life style': Hollywood, interior design, surfing, skateboarding, drive-ins and this satisfied and reassured them. Batlle tries to make the different approaches to life that exists between California and New York coexists in his works, using lifestyles as a theme to make art.
Gallerie 1000 eventi, Milan The Trouble With Having An Interior Designer For A Mother 2003
Back in New York, Batlle continued using lifestyles as a theme to make art, he took aim at the gourmet's food habits, using them as a form of social commentary. In 2005, Roth Gallery in New York presented his “Epicurean Drawings.” Batlle's deliberate methodology emphasizes two cherished hobbies: gourmet cooking and art collecting. By breaking down recipes, he creates visual poetry. When referencing iconic images from recent art history, he offers a critical perspective on a consumer-driven art market.
Jay Batlle The Minimalist Series Grill Mastery 2004
In 2009, Batlle had a solo show at Nyehaus called “Cutting out the Middleman,” alluding to the term in economics used to describe the removal of intermediaries in the supply chain, essentially Capitalism 101. Ironically, it was the last show for the gallery at it’s Gramercy Park location. Batlle’s filled No Drawing No Cry Books were shown alongside Kippenberger’s hotel drawings. “Another still closer double act is performed by Martin Kippenberger and Jay Batlle. “Kippenberger's Untitled (Mencey Hotel, Spain) (1988) is a cartoonish ink sketch of a rearing horse being urged into battle by its rider. Batlle's Places Like This Hate People Like You (2003-4) is a copy of the same work made on different stationery (from Château Marmont) and inserted into a copy of the late German artist's NO DRAWING, NO CRY, a collection published after his death. The tribute is an odd one, clearly heartfelt but unafraid to obscure its ostensible subject's own work in favour of a naturally imperfect imitation.”-FRIEZE MAGAZINE PRINT BY Michael Wilson in Reviews | 05 MAY 04
Nyehaus Gallery, Gramercy Park, NY Cutting Out The Middleman 2009
In 2011, Batlle's first solo institutional exhibition, Free Lunch, debuted at The National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile. The exhibition showcased The Restaurant Stationery Series, which critiqued indulgence related to food while simultaneously celebrating and reflecting on the preparation and consumption of food across diverse cultures. Free Lunch featured Batlle's work, which is characterized by the use of graphic material delivered in gourmet food restaurants, stains left by liquids and food, as well as paint and fragments of recipes, notes, and photographs. The exhibition presented a series of 63 small-format works inspired by Batlle's culinary experiences worldwide. It also included a large-format painting on canvas, posters made especially for the occasion, and a mural intervention. The National Museum of Bella Artes published his first monographic catalog in conjunction with the exhibition, which includes an interview conducted by David Coggins, critic for Art in America, and a text written by Patricio Muñoz Zarate, curator of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.
The National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile, Free Lunch 2011
From 2003 to 2018, Batlle collected and reproduced pieces of restaurant stationery from different establishments around the world. The stationery served as a backdrop for a strongly visceral medium, in which he brings together food coloring, red wine, coffee stains, and traditional painting. Once finished, Batlle adds fragments of recipes and life notes to the backgrounds, such as photographs, found objects, and old exhibition cards, which form another layer of this reflective meta-language in the pieces, like footnotes to life. "Batlle's working style is characterized as quick and color-saturated, combining calculated collage with expressive tension to interrogate late capitalist sensorial oppression. The style exudes a familiar and conversational tone, appearing bordering on impolite but also aiding and abetting.” -(Transient Withdrawals, Jay Batlle Works/Obras 2003-2018, by Meade Fionn, 2019)
In 2012, Batlle, along with Shelter Serra, Jamie Diamond, and James English Leary, was part of the first group of artists to be invited to do a residency at the newly formed Mana Contemporary. Batlle had his first silkscreen edition titled "R.S.V.P. V.I.P. R.I.P." published by Gary Lichtenstein Editions at Mana. Batlle took part in "All the Best Artists Are My Friends" in the new Mana Exposition facility (aka the Glass Gallery), a former industrial structure transformed by architect Richard Meier. Mexican-American artist Ray Smith confidently—and successfully—inaugurates the venue with a show of 80 of his closest artist-friends: 44 familiar-to-famous names in the sweeping main hall (Saint Clair Cemin, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Ron Gorchov, Rita Ackermann, Ai Weiwei) and 36 emerging and midcareer artists in the side gallery (Jay Batlle, Phong Bui).-REVIEW, ART IN AMERICA
In 2014 Batlle was the first American artist to have a solo exhibition, titled "Naked Ravioli" for Roza Azora Gallery in Moscow, Russia. Batlle contrasted two new series of paintings on restaurant stationery, one of nudes and the other of doodles. Both groups catch the artist daydreaming, doing something automatically and without thinking. However Batlle’s characteristic nonchalance, his hit-or-miss doodling, his "let's try this" and "how about that” are here contained by the formal style and content of an overall restaurant theme. The result is a series of simple, exuberant gestures that recall the drawings of artists like Ludwig Bemelmans, James Thurber, or Saul Steinberg.
Esso Gallery, NYC, Grade Pending 2015
In 2017 Batlle’s traveling solo museum exhibition "Closed For Business" debuted at the National Museum Of Bella Artes in Santiago, Chile. In 2019 the MNBA Santiago, Chile, and MNBA, Museo sin Muros – Concepción Chile co-published a 216-page color monograph titled: Jay Batlle Works/Obras 2003-2018. Printed by Ograma and containing comprehensive texts on Batlle’s works from Patricio Zárate, Katherine Chan, Fionn Meade, Adrian Dannatt, and Filippo Fossati in English and Spanish. “Batlle translated his ideas about the status of the artwork as a commodity into sculptures that addressed credit card debt—the ultimate signifier of aspirational living. The Warholian model of art as business became a motivation for Batlle to create his corporation, “Jay Batlle Inc.,” whose corporate stamp appears on many of his works on paper, giving the drawings the feeling of financial instruments, transactional objects akin to a publicly traded stock option. By rendering the economic forces upon the lifestyle of the artist as well as upon the art object visible, Batlle engages viewers in a dialogue about cultural production and consumption that reveals the crisis in art-making today: how is art still relevant in the face of neo-liberal consumerism that potentially evacuates art of its meaning?” -(Food Network, Jay Batlle Works/Obras 2003-2018, by Katherine Chan, 2019)
"Jay Batlle’s art is a homage to food of good taste. Yet underneath its savory surfaces, Batlle reveals how foodie culture might just be a recipe for financial disaster." Interview Magazine Ana Finel Honigman
Jay Batlle, Inconvenienced Millionaire 2015,
Batlle, a Californian conceptual artist, gained international recognition for using vintage illustrations on enlarged restaurant menus as a conceptual strategy, until after 2019 when he decided to return to a figurative painting to address his Pareidolia. “If my earlier restaurant works were about the notion of cooking and the Epicurean as a form of social critique through illustration, these recent paintings are actually how I cook. When I start painting, I don’t have a rigid formula. I am familiar with how certain materials behave, so I take one color and put it with the other. It looks a certain way on the canvas, so I continue in that direction. I add more, and I make adjustments. Eventually, the colors and the image lead me somewhere, and I stop when I feel it’s finished. I don't question myself, "Is it good, is it bad?" It's immaterial to me. It's purely a reaction, similar to the way I approach cooking. With the magic of oil paint, I can create surfaces and textures that compel the audience to experience these paintings in real life. Initially, I drew inspiration from the French Nabis School of Painting for color and perspective. Then, I focused on still lives, interiors, and landscapes that evoke emotion rather than replicate real life.”
Batlle's studio in France
In his recent paintings, Batlle likes to employ decalcomania, a favored technique of the Surrealists, involving transferring fresh brushstrokes from one print onto another. He builds up the works through multiple layers of woodcut and hand-colored passages, each contributing nuances of fresh painterly activity. The diverse techniques employed in his recent paintings keep the viewer engaged and evoke the desire to keep looking.
Batlle explained that he developed these recent paintings by layering multiple rounds of drawing, painting, and hand-pressed passages to maintain the viewer's engagement and evoke the desire to keep looking. He often perceives specific, and at times meaningful, images or faces within random patterns or textures, a phenomenon known as Pareidolia. Upon creating the visages, he incorporated a motif of the white glove, collaged from paper, onto the canvas, drawing inspiration from the history of surrealism. Similar to how Magritte incorporated an apple, Dali incorporated melting clocks, and Koons incorporated an inflatable rabbit into their work, Batlle considers the "white glove" to be his signature motif.
Batlle's chef paintings
Batlle’s work has been featured in several publications including The New York Times, Art In America, New York Magazine, The Art Newspaper, Huffington Post, Interview Magazine, Elle, French Vogue, The Boston Herald, Artinfo, Art & Auction, and Frieze.
Batlle’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions including: The MoMA PS1, Metro Pictures, Miguel Abreu Gallery, Esso Gallery, Casey Kaplan, Nyehaus, Andrew Roth, Paul Kasmin, Feigen Contemporary, Thomas Erben, The Chelsea Museum, The National Academy Museum, Exit Art, The Dorsky Gallery, and The Whitney Museum, in New York CIty. The Glass House Museum at Mana and Gary Lichtenstein Editions, New Jersey; Roberts & Tilto Gallery, Blum & Poe Gallery, both in Los Angeles, CA; The National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago de Chile, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo sin Muros – Concepción, both in Chile; Galeria Impakto, Lima, Perù; The Artothek Museum, Cologne, The Ausstellungshalle Zeitgenössische Kunst in Münster, The Abteiberg Museum, Mönchengladbach all in Germany, The Museum of Liverpool, and at The World Museum, Liverpool, both in the United Kingdom; Soho House Istanbul, Turkey; Atelier’s 63, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Galerie Frank, Paris, France; Roza Azora Gallery, Moscow, Russia; Clages Gallery, Cologne, Germany; Galleria 1000eventi, Milan, and Villa Mensa, Turin, both in Italy, Gallery Phillips de Pury, Dubai, C A B I N gallery Dubai, both in the United Arab Emirates and 11 Columbia, Monaco.
AG: The Stationery Series involves a lot of suggestively posed nude women. What is the association between women and food here?
JB: People collect art with financial aspirations as well as aesthetic. I wanted to make a body of work that critiqued the branding of contemporary art or artists, specifically in painting, but at the same time champions the Epicurean and Dionysian aspects of being a painter, the “romantic ideal.” I think that through contradiction you can escape capitalism. I’m questioning why someone “likes” something; is it the nude reclining, the gesture, the color, the scale in the picture, or did you happen to get married in the restaurant on whose stationery I drew on?
-Q&A By Alex Greenberger, Artspace Magazine
photo: Graeme Mitchell
Jay Batlle’s art is homage to food of good taste. Yet underneath its savory surfaces Batlle reveals how foodie culture might just be a recipe for financial disaster.
Gourmet food might not be the first thing that comes to mind when discussing classic works of art, but practicing chef and artist Jay Batlle is quick to draw the connection between the two.
Germany, June 2011 – Art is arguably our purest luxury. It has no inherent function, although it can enhance all other aspects of life. In contrast, food can simultaneously be a luxury and fuel all life’s functions, as Jay Batlle’s witty and thoughtful art demonstrates.
MARCH 10, 2014
NEW YORK — It was Peking Duck that first piqued an 11-year-old Jay Batlle’s interest in the culinary arts. As a pre-teen, his first studio was the kitchen in his Phoenix home, where he lived with his father and learned how to make the iconic Chinese dish from celebrated chef Ken Hom.
In the film version of David Mamet’s masterpiece ‘Glengarry Glen Ross,’ Al Pacino, playing the satanically slick salesman Ricky Roma, lures a pitifully meek Jonathan Pryce into buying a piece of worthless property with an amoral monologue on what in life gives lasting value. “Great meals fade in reflection,” he says. “Everything else gains. You know why? ‘Cause
it’s only food. Just shit we put in us. It keeps us going. But it is only food.”
Batlle’s paintings spotlight pleasurable decadence – specifically gourmet, fashion, alcohol and money – to ask the viewer questions about their own indulgences and desires. His work is both a social commentary on our culture and society but also perpetuates the stereotypes and clichés he asks us to look at.
When New York-based artist Jay Batlle dines out, he’s still on the clock. Of course, he’s at the restaurant to feast and imbibe and commune with friends. Upon the meal’s consummation, however, he poses a question he’s been regularly asking restaurant staffers for the past decade.
Jay Batlle loves German art, French food, and English women, though not in that order. The 33 year-old artist is currently in fine form -- his work can be seen in a sprawling group show about surfing since 1950, now on view across Chelsea, at Nyehaus, Friedrich Petzel, and Metro Pictures.
Jay Batlle and I have had a continuous, incessantly-focused conversation going for nearly six years now—always about art. We began as neighbors in Brooklyn, and now that we live far apart we talk on the phone, usually while Jay is driving home from his studio in Jersey City and I’m at mine in Los Angeles. Recently, I interviewed him over the phone about his new, extensive body of work, The Restaurant Stationery Series..
I spent the better part of an afternoon scrolling endlessly through his work on a spare Tumblr page dubbed, 'Restaurant-Restaurant.' For years, I had no idea who he was, and there was a certain pleasure in that. Some unknown industry insider out there somewhere was collecting restaurant stationary and bringing them to life with cheeky tableaus, splashy with color, a joyous depiction of the cherished angst of restaurant life. When I found myself on the phone, miraculously, with this mystery artist, I knew he was the real deal because all we talked about was food.
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