For The Armory Show 2019, Anat Ebgi presents the work of painter Jay Stuckey. Drawing is essential to Stuckey’s practice, his canvas panels bear the impulsivity of the diaristic yet the measured tempo of surrealistic vigilance. An accumulation of oil and graphite, Stuckey’s work often features a revolving cast of characters – cheerleaders, scuba-divers, and anthropomorphized snakes and cacti-people – which produce a unique pictorial language of both collective memories and private routines. Stuckey’s archetypes divulge the artist’s own ambitions and fears, while elevating the deeply universal and human. Text and image abound, the dreamlike narrativity of each canvas reveling in the absurdity of the everyday.
Jay Stuckey (b. 1968, Washington, D.C.) lives and works in Los Angeles. Stuckey received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago, and BFA from Brown University. He has exhibited internationally at venues including The Cedars, Texas; Abel Raum für Neue Kunst, Berlin; Institut Franco-American, Rennes; Eric Firestone Gallery, New York; Palmetto Center for the Arts, San Antonio; Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco; Deutscher Kunstlerbund, Berlin; Blank Projects, Cape Town; Goethe Institute, Johannesburg; Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila; Pøst Gallery, LA, 16:1 Gallery, Santa Monica and Axis Gallery, Sacramento. He is included in the public collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA and Collection Majudia, Montreal. He has lectured at Brown University, OTIS, and the Jung Institute. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo exhibition with Anna Zorina Gallery, New York.