Jay Payton, Jhator “Giving Alms to the Birds” (quadriptych), 2025, Courtesy of Lovay Fine Arts
Jay Payton, As The Hands from Heaven Reach Down to You on Judgement Day, 2024, Courtesy of Lovay Fine Arts
On the occasion of Liste Basel 2026, the Amercian painter Jay Payton presents an entirely new body of paintings developed in 2026.
Jay Payton (b. 1992) is a painter born in Atlanta, and living in Brooklyn, New York.
Payton’s practice is rooted in process, accumulation and material transformation. He builds his surfaces through repeated layers—not only of paint, but also glue, aluminum foil, plastic, and other industrial materials.
Integrating materials like crinkled layers of plastic, paper and sheets of aluminum beneath thick layers of paint, Payton creates heavily textured and delicate surfaces. Despite their large scale, the surfaces are also fragile and ephemeral, hinting (with the help of poetic texts and titles) towards primordial spaces of both flourishing and entropic systems.
His work contemplates the development of the human experience through research into biology, anthropology and technology. He seeks to navigate how abstract painting can be visualized anew.
Rue des Sablons 4
1205 Geneva
Switzerland