Jay Isaac

The Energy of the Sun

September 12 - October 11

Paul Petro Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the opening of "The Energy of the Sun", an exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by Toronto-based artist Jay Isaac. In this latest body of work Isaac continues to transpose his vision of the commonplace as it is manifested in the traditional subjects of still life, landscape and figuration. While these works provide tangible evidence of his experience of energy and light during the interaction with the subject in his work, be it a vase of flowers or a view through a window, it is in their making that Isaac also offers an unabashed commentary and critique on current painting strategies at large.

Jay Isaac was born in 1975 in Saint John, New Brunswick. He attended the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design in Vancouver, BC (1993-97) and the Cardiff Institute of Art & Design (1996). He lived and worked in the U.K, primarily in Bristol, for two years (1997-99) before settling in Toronto.

Isaac's work has appeared in solo exhibitions at such venues as Mercer Union, Toronto (2002), Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Los Angeles (2003), and the Cue Art Foundation, New York (2005) as well as group exhibitions at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy ("Officina Americana", 2002), the Power Plant, Toronto (2004), White Columns, New York (2004), Galerie Kunstbuero, Vienna (2004), the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto (2002, 2006) and the Agnes Etherington Art Center, Kingston, Ontario (2007). Isaac's work will appear in "Art On Paper", Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC (curated by Xandra Eden).

"The Energy of the Sun" is Isaac's fourth solo exhibition at Paul Petro Contemporary Art.

"The paintings in "The Energy of The Sun" refer mainly to themselves. Painted from observation, in my studio and surroundings. The subjects range from figurative, to plants and flowers to landscapes. As subjects they are traditional but as paintings they are more concerned with being fully present and energized. There is little foresight projection or attempts for refinement. If something doesn't work out in the moment then it gets tossed. I want there to be a realness with how things are represented. How things actually are. To me. They are like a social science project for me to represent, to an outside observer, how things looked to me when I was painting them. Making images from life is fluid and allows for imperfections. Unresolved things have potential and are more alive than resolved things. Life cant be explained with resolved ideas and formulas. The finished product is what it is, but has to be as beautiful and interesting as the subject itself or its a worthless endeavor. The energy and light that is conveyed to me through observing something results in a painting. They are real time actions of allowing everything going on in a situation to find its way into a simple painting of a model or some flowers. A time based bridge of separate things coming together to make a third. The more involved I am with the surroundings, the better the painting. This is what subjectivity truly looks likes."

"The other works in the show are a sculptural monument to the paintings that didn't quite make it (what I would consider failed paintings). a sculpture made of dead flowers used as subjects in the paintings and three painting made by working over unfinished pencil sketches I found and purchased from an estate sale of the deceased New Brunswick artist Anne Wilson."

Jay Isaac
September 2008