Jay Isaac

The Zone of No Ideas

February 26 - March 27

Paul Petro Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the opening of The Zone of No Ideas, an exhibition of new paintings by Toronto-based artist Jay Isaac.

The latest work takes on a similar philosophy but an entirely different approach from Isaac's previous two exhibitions at our gallery, The Beauty of Things, In This World, Now and Always (2007) and The Energy of the Sun (2008). These past exhibitions contained iconic images from landscape, still life and figurative genres based on observational painting in the studio and during a far-reaching cross country road trip.

In his own words, Jay Isaac's new paintings "are the natural evolution after reaching the limits of object making ... painting from observation."

"While remaining involved in the present-ness of painting, these new works are devoid of any preconceived intentions or ideas meant to be fulfilled by the end of the painting process. Instead, the paintings are culminations of time spent in the studio making choices and formal decisions - more blue here, more violet there - with no set plan as to how or when they will finish. As objects they can be described as abstract, a play between the physical and the ethereal, the tangible and the mysterious."

Isaac's new paintings deny the easily photographed or reproducible image. They are meant to be experienced in the real. Although sincere and essential, the work continues to push forward a critique of conformist attitudes and expectations of contemporary art making.

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 is co-founder and editor of Hunter and Cook, a contemporary art magazine based in Toronto. This is Isaac's fifth solo exhibition at Paul Petro Contemporary Art.

Beautiful Monster, a new thirty-minute film on Jay Isaac by Tony Romano will be shown at Diaz Contemporary (100 Niagara St, Toronto) opening Thursday Feb 25th as part of Romano's solo exhibition, A Fist Full of Flies.