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 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. 

     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. 

    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.

    Back in New York, Batlle's work was inspired by gourmet 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.

     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.”[1]

     In 2011 Free Lunch, Batlle’s first solo institutional exhibition debuted at The National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile. Showcasing 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.  “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.”[2]

     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

     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?”[3]

     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.”

     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 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.

RECENT SOLO AND TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS:

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).

footnotes:

[1] FRIEZE MAGAZINE PRINT BY Michael Wilson in Reviews | 05 MAY 04

[2] (Transient Withdrawals, Jay  Batlle Works/Obras 2003-2018, by Meade Fionn, 2019)

[3]  (Food Network, Jay  Batlle Works/Obras 2003-2018, by Katherine Chan, 2019)