Nationality Canadian Name Jay Isaac | Role Artist | |
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Born 1975 Canada Known for Painting, Drawing, Collage, Sculpture | ||
Jay Isaac (born 1975) is a Canadian artist based in Toronto who shows his work internationally. He is known primarily for his painting, but has experimented as a performance artist and musician. He was also founder, editor, publisher, and designer of Hunter and Cook magazine.
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Early life and education
Isaac was born in New Brunswick. He attended Cardiff School of Art and Design in Wales in 1996 and graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1997.
Career
Isaac's 2005 show at the CUE Art Foundation explored issues of class and taste while depicting the lifestyle of the modern artist. Curator Xandra Eden described his work as "cut with a bit of surreal comedy".
In 2006, while painting the New Brunswick landscape, he began to move away from painting objects and to experiment with a more abstract approach.
Isaac co-founded the magazine Hunter & Cook in 2008 which was published until 2011.
In 2009 Isaac contributed a giant ice sculpture to the Massive Uprising exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario. His 2010 exhibit The Zone of No Ideas presented twelve paintings, all displaying an abstract approach and enlarged scale.
In 2012 Isaac and Lorenz Peter created a number of musical tracks under the name Bay of Creatures.
In 2014's show The Sponges, the works are process-based and surreal, and relate to Yves Klein's use of sponges as a painting tool and his interest in "nothingness" and aesthetic "badness". Isaac made unusual use of sand and chalk within the paint. Reviewer Brad Phillips (artist) pointed out the change from Isaac's more representational style in his earlier Vancouver exhibition, writing "Isaac has become very adept at making work that both entices and upsets the viewer."
In 2013 Isaac created an Instagram account called "@nationalgalleryofcanada" through which he posted images of Canadian art. After the official National Gallery of Canada filed a complaint to Instagram in 2016, the account was removed.