Jeffrey Morabito
Medium: Painting Studio Location: Artist Studios at 43-01 22nd Street - Studio# 217 43-01 22nd Street Website:: www.jeffreymorabito.com Artist Bio: Born in Bronxville, half Hong Kong-ese and half Italian, Jeffrey Morabito spent his early years traveling between New York and Hong Kong. Much of Morabito's work plays with the legibility of objects in painting. Recognizable figures are put in unrecognizable picture planes, or the reverse. A recipient of the Art Cake Studio Program, he has exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries like Matthius Kupper Gallery, Beijing, China; N-Space and Jay Gallery Seoul, South Korea; Rosenfeld Gallery Philadelphia; Projektraum Knut Osper, Cologne, Germany; and in Eric Firestone Loft, SFA Projects and M.David & Co., New York. In 2019, a retrospective of his work, entitled "Glossolalia" and curated by Karen Wilkin at 1 GAP Gallery. Morabito's work has been reviewed by the New York Times, Hyperallergic, White Hot Magazine, Art Spiel, Youngspace, Deliciousline and China Daily. Artist Statement: I place recognizable figures/objects into unrecognizable picture planes, and vice versa. It is important to create a space of exchange between the material object of the painting and the viewer. When the works are viewed from different distances, they move between surfaces you look at and surfaces you look through. My choice of subject is biographical, both in a cultural and arbitrary sense. In spirit of choosing subjects without any pretense, I pick topics I see on my daily bicycle commute to the studio; overpriced Avocado toast from the cafe where I get coffee, the complex yet mundane reflections I see in cars along the way. Drawing on my unusual multi-cultural heritage, half Italian half Hong Kong-Chinese, I re-interpret cultural traditions, viewing Asian art through the perspective of both a cultural insider and observational voyeur. I hope that when a viewer is able to take a step onto the stage of my painting, the narrative previously being formed through the recognizable will be slowly but surely undone. The backdrop becomes the actor, and the actor becomes the backdrop. All images and text copyright Jeffrey Morabito