Jon Pestoni

Jon Pestoni's paintings are proposals, formal experiments in which competing, even contradictory, aesthetic positions co-exist, often within the same work. They are documents of an ongoing process of self-examination, cancellation, and improvisation in which the desired result is not only visual surprise but also the continual rediscovery of how art feels in real time, on a moment-to-moment basis. As his work has evolved over the last few years, Pestoni has introduced new materials,...
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Jon Pestoni's paintings are proposals, formal experiments in which competing, even contradictory, aesthetic positions co-exist, often within the same work. They are documents of an ongoing process of self-examination, cancellation, and improvisation in which the desired result is not only visual surprise but also the continual rediscovery of how art feels in real time, on a moment-to-moment basis. As his work has evolved over the last few years, Pestoni has introduced new materials, varied formats, and more dramatic shifts in scale to his repertoire of moves. This monograph, the artist's first, surveys his painting practice from 2011-2016, including medium- and large-scale canvases, and mixed-media paintings on paper mounted to aluminum, several of which were featured in his solo exhibition "Jon Pestoni: Some Years" at the Cleveland Museum of Art at Transformer Station (April 23 - July 24, 2016). The commissioned texts and selected images provide readers with an intimate sense of how Pestoni gets from one compositional idea to the next, and how a given idea, once subjected to his process, can emerge in two or more drastically different ways. In addition to the Cleveland Museum of Art at Transformer Station, Pestoni's paintings have been the subject of solo and two-person exhibitions at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens (with Alex Hubbard); Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; and Real Fine Arts, Brooklyn. His work has also recently been included in group exhibitions at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; The Pit, Los Angeles; Office Baroque, Brussels; Todd Madigan Gallery, California State University, Bakersfield; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, among others. Foreword by Beau Rutland. Essay by Janet Kraynak.