Jonny Detiger

BLANK SPACE is pleased to present a new solo viewing room of works by New York City based artist Jonny Detiger. Detiger has received acclaim for his fantastical paintings, works on paper, and furniture design and his work is instantly recognizable by its whimsical and positive aesthetics. This exhibition features a variety of Detiger’s styles from his large-scale abstract works to his minutely detailed textual pieces on paper. The exhibition will be live from June 19^th until July 19^th

Shine on Me

Detiger's style of painting, drawing, and design is influenced by his relationship with music, specifically rock and roll and disco in the 1970's. Drawing on this well of inspiration, his large abstract works are influenced by the waveforms of the songs that soundtrack his life. These three large scale works, which range from eight to thirteen feet wide, feature flowing channels of color that stretch beyond the edge of the canvas. While these works are powerful in scale and form, they exude a balanced subtlety through the use of raw canvas and more muted colors that build upon and blend into one another across the entire work. At the heart of these pieces is Detiger's masterful and instantly recognizable line which abstracts the concept of a sound-wave from physics and makes it more organic as if to imbue the music with a life of its own.

Right to Left: Disco Ball and Poodle Pool

Another important influence in Detiger’s work is architecture and spatial design. Using quintessential mid-century modern design motifs, Detiger builds idealized worlds on the canvas by mixing abstraction, technical drawing, and illustration. Again using raw canvas as his base, he floats these houses, apartments, and interiors in space without any form of vanishing background. This technique renders these worlds and spaces in an almost heavenly fashion as if these gatherings are occurring in the clouds.

Right to Left: Beach Boy, It's a Trap, All Powerful, and Man of Leisure

Drawing and works on paper have also been an integral part of Detiger's ouvre since he began his practice and he has developed this medium into a unique and vibrant style. Building each piece through incredibly careful markmaking with ink on paper, Detiger adds depth and life to these works through his use of bright and saturated watercolor pigments. Formally, these works range from portraiture that brilliantly uses negative space to capture the subject to dense sheets of figures, text, and symbols drawn from music and design. In his Light Up series, Detiger adds hidden messages inside his bubble filled compositions through the use of light emitting paint that glows in the dark.

A self-taught artist, Jonny Detiger went to school in Holland and Switzerland before studying business and economics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the London School of Economics. Jonny Detiger is an artist and designer whose art has been shown and collected widely in galleries across the United States and Europe. He grew up in Holland but is now based in New York with his family and works out of his Chinatown Studio.