Jon Pestoni
The abstract painter portraying both composition and process.
The works of Jon Pestoni ask more questions than they give answers.
His oeuvre is characterized by a long process of layering paint and materials onto paper or canvas. As a result, a single work seems to hold multiple finished paintings, painted over and over into a single, complex composition.
Thus, in the layers of his oeuvre, Pestoni creates a history of each work’s creation — the compositions that could have been, or that almost were.
He gives viewers a look into his artistic process, exposing his artistic decisions — which elements of a painting should be kept and which should be changed. But in doing so he also reveals the lack of fixed certainty in any work of art.
This allusion to randomness of an artist’s discretion is a direct reflection of Pestoni’s own artistic practice:
“I don’t necessarily know how to finish a painting except by repeatedly trying to. I try to introduce problems into my practice.” — Jon Pestoni
But Pestoni’s investigation of indecisiveness also forces us as viewers to reexamine their own desires as consumers of art.
We naturally engage with his work’s underlying suggests at compositions, desiring to complete what has left only hinted at. He reveals to us our own need for wholeness in art.
He also forces us to acknowledge a work in its entirety. The layers seem to extend infinitely back into the work’s past. We are faced with not only a single piece, but made aware of the artistic process that created it, transforming us into more mindful and informed viewers.
Jon Pestoni lives and works in Los Angeles. He received a BA in Art from UC Berkely and an MFA from UCLA. He has exhibited his work at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, Galerie Parisa Kind in Frankfurt. He has had solo exhibits at the David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles, Real Fine Arts in Brooklyn and Lisa Cooley in New York.
You can now acquire multiple Jon Pestoni works on artlist.co.
This post was written with the help of Alice Mahoney.
