Jaybo Monk is an urban wanderer, a traveller that moves in the space of that unfinished metropolis, that is the world, among memories, fragments and traces abandoned in the urban landscape, that works like a theatre of the human joy and pain, studded with relationships that slide between first glances and deep emotions.
During this wandering, the painter meets the unexpected, what happens by chance, and is inspired by that accident that catches the eye and the brain, that incidental event, detail, word or shape that breaks in along the way and that he takes with him to the canvas.
Jaybo builds his poetics on these small accidents and unwanted mistakes that happen. He takes advantage of what happens at the wrong time, in the wrong place, his research in painting is about trying to be open to the unknown and to the accidental, without prejudices but with amazement and curiosity.
It is exactly this curiosity that makes Jaybo attracted to the unseen, from things left on the streets, to items forgotten around, to left-overs or something no one
notices anymore, things as lost as he is in himself, like a peculiar expression on a passerby’s face or a move of a stranger's body walking along the streets.
Inspiration can also come from a small detail that attracts the painter's attention flipping through the pages of an art magazine or a book about the great masters of art, from Bacon, to Modigliani and Leonardo. Everything that runs away from the standards or that remains lost in the cracks of a reality always more lived in fast forward sneaks into the painter's mind and comes together in his imaginative world.
Listen to the heliumTALK Podcast with Jaybo Monk:
03.23: Treasure Island (group)
05.20: Behind closed Doors (group)
03.18: Hello My Dear (group)
07.17: COWBOYLAND Vernissage | Exhibition Views (15 years heliumcowboy - group)
12.16: Bonbons & Bier (group)
06.16: 142 Jahre Kunst in Hamburg (group in collabration with Affenfaust Galerie)
This is a selection only. If you are interested in additional artwork, please get in touch for either a personal appointment at the gallery or a portfolio of available work.
