24 Apr 2019

Jeffrey Morabito: Glossolalia

1 GAP Gallery

Reviewed by Derek Bernstein

Jeffrey Morabito's elegantly subtle brush work, informed by traditional Chinese calligraphy, animates the surprising Pizza Rat (With Wings) III (2018) in his exhibition at 1 GAP. Morabito ably straddles multiple cultures and influences in an expertly painted and cohesive body of work.

Half Hong Konger, Morabito grew up in New York City, spent ten years living and working in Beijing, spent time in Seoul, showed in Germany, and now lives in New York again, affording him a distinctive vantage point of each side of the world from the other. Armed with this unique perspective, he uses paint to hop from one cultural source to the next, marrying a masterfully understated technique with the rawness and grit of New York's detritus. Morabito constructs work by fearlessly reducing forms to their simplest values, and building from there, without the slightest preciousness. This puts the burden of success of the pictures on color, and ever more intense handling of paint.