#jayrechsteiner

The future has been assassinated, Jay Rechsteiner

The Future has been assassinated a group of five pieces of work, part of 'You can live a lifetime on a hundred dollars.' Sicily, 2016 1. collage 2. drawing 3. cardboard cube (inside-out panetone cardboard box) on three 4. potatoes 5. video projection (journey from Castellammare del Golfo to Palermo, Sicily) and a potatoe two painted potatoes

Bad Painting Number 01: Angry men & women beating the hell out of black, yellow, brown, gay people & hairdressers on a lovely Tuesday afternoon., Jay Rechsteiner

Painting: Acrylic on Canvas. This is the first painting of an on-going series titled Bad Painting. BAD PAINTING is a series of paintings that I would like to categorize as Bad Realism which is work that is bad in terms of style, craftsmanship & content. The badly executed paintings represent the underlying bad reality of the actions depicted. The work challenges the Western sense of beauty, perfectionism and fear of failure. I personally find making this work very liberating as I am not restricted in terms of how well I paint. Rooms are distorted, bodies are out of proportion, shadows fall into the wrong direction etc. The term Bad Painting was coined by the critic and curator Marcia Tucker in the 70s. I have always been fascinated by the freedom of 'bad' painters such as Joan Brown or Neil Jenney. 'Bad' painting doesn't only set me free from the constraints of 'good' & 'decent' technique but also gives me a feeling of everything-goes and everything-is-fine. There are obviously a lot of people who don't like my Bad Painting series very much, not only because of the way they are painted but also due to the themes and subject matters. I think there is only a handful of people who appreciate the work. During the process of working on this series (since early 2013) I have come to terms with the unpopularity of the work and now I simply don't care if people love, like, dislike or even hate my paintings. Jay Rechsteiner’s Bad Paintings (2013) brings the horrors of human culpability front and center. We don’t have to look too far to see the atrocities within our communities. Turn on the news, take an extended walk through familiar streets. Sadness and pain are everywhere. Rechsteiner states that his “main interest [is] in the underlying structure of things [and how] his artworks directly respond to the surrounding environment and . . . everyday experiences.” We so often look for beauty in everything. Why not accept the ugliness of misery? Confront it and learn how to deal with it? Rechsteiner wrestles with these ideas in his studio and asks the same of his veiwer. He wishes to “demonstrate how life extends beyond [our] own subjective limits,” to tell “a story about the effects of global cultural interaction,” and “the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves.” John Ros, GalleryEll

French Spring, Jay Rechsteiner

Full title: French Spring and the Sky of Death 'French Spring and the Sky of Death' is based on Albert Reich's painting titled 'Deutscher Fühling' (German Spring) that illustrated the first edition of Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'. I have merged the blond girl in the original painting with far-right politician & leader of the National Front Marine Le Pen from France. Instead of holding a bunch of flowers, Le Pen is holding a bunch of Honebana (Flowers made of bones) inspired by Japanese arist Hideki Tokushige. The Nazi soldiers have become citizen soldiers in blue uniforms (like the French riot police) who are making their way into the Élysée Palace. This painting has been painted in December 2016, a year before the presidential elections in France. It reflects my fear of a far-right take-over in Europe. As much as I like the idea for this painting, I am very disappointed with the pictorial outcome. http://jayrechsteiner.com/french-spring.htm This painting is part of my Bad Painting Phase 2 series: Bad Painting Phase 2 is series of (seemingly) badly executed paintings. As crude & dilettantish as the work sometimes seems, it is often very complex in terms of composition and use of colour. The deliberate 'wrong' use of colours, distorted geometry and in general amateurishly painted pictures explore all these components as well as what a successful picture is and not is. Despite the title of the series, I attempt to create successful, well balanced workd. In terms of content and themes, the work in Bad Painting, phase 2 deals with possible present day and future events & situations, mirroring my own fears and joys. I am interested in exploring Appenzell peasant art (Appenzeller Bauernmalerei), the works of David Hockney, Lubaina Himid, Henri Rousseau, James Esor & Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma Moses) to name a few. As I my general practice focues on process more than anything else, I have decided to include both, the successful and unsuccessful paintings.

imitation, Jay Rechsteiner

the word imitation is being projected into the room. The work refers to Giovanni Anselmo's installation invisible and is an imitation of it. I would like to comment on the fact that most (if not all) is an imitation of something that already exists This work questions who or what creates who or what. Who is an imitation, the artist, the work of art or the viewer? Who creates the imitation? In a wider sense it questions if we as humans create culture or culture creates us. The artists projects the idea of 'imitation' into the room, leaving the question of who the imitation is open.

Monster Boy, Jay Rechsteiner

Boy with Monster Hat,acrylic, ink, pencil on canvas, 100 cm x 100 cm