Jay Batlle

Jay Batlle's "Epicurean" paintings, drawings, performances, and sculptures take the habits of the gourmet as a source of inspiration and social commentary. Batlle belongs to a generation of American artists who have responded to the precepts of minimalism and conceptualism. These artists aim to recreate the image and the social process in art, providing a channel for imaginary and everyday experience and forcing academic conventions to confront mass culture.

Batlle, known as the “Epicurean Painter,” is interested in exploring “The Good Life”—success, fortune, and an abundance of sensual pleasures—and the gulf that exists between this ideal and reality. Batlle subverts the gourmet experience into social commentary, mostly on the interchangeability of wealth and power, and the blurring of boundaries between the two as it relates to indulgence and excess. His oeuvre offers both a critique of comestible-related decadence and a celebration of the preparation and consumption of food across various cultures.  The artist asks: “What is the meaning of art, getting to the top of the social economic ladder or having enough to eat?”

Batlle’s work has been exhibited at galleries and museums around the world, including The National Academy Museum, Nyehaus Gramercy Park, Andrew Roth, Metro Pictures, Casey Kaplan, Paul Kasmin, Feigen Contemporary, the Chelsea Museum, Exit Art, The Dorsky Gallery, The Whitney, (all in New York) and The Glass House Museum at Mana Contemporary, New Jersey, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, The Ausstellungshalle Zeitgenössische Kunst in Münster, The Abteiberg Museum Mönchengladbach, Germany, Roza Azora Gallery, Moscow, Russia and at The Museum of Liverpool, Liverpool. Batlle’s first solo institutional show took place in 2012 at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile.

Click links below to read more about the artist:

Q&A with Artist and Chef Jay Batlle on Pop Art and Food

Jay Batlle's stacked steel Monoply figurines on the roofdeck of the Bleecker Street Arts Club