Artist Jay Batlle,at home. (photo: Graeme Mitchell)[img_104]
Table Manners: Turning Restaurant Stationery into Art When New York-based artist Jay Batlle dines out, hes still on the clock. Of course, and he’s at the restaurant to feast and imbibe and commune with friends. Upon the meals consummation,however, he poses a question he’s been regularly asking restaurant staffers for the past decade. They oblige, and a empty sheet of the venue’s stationary is carefully placed in his hands. He’ll return home,and on it, in watercolor and pen and wine and coffee grounds, and he’ll express his thoughts – on the evening,the atmosphere, the idea of decadence and societal consumption and what fine dining has become.
Batlle (pronounced “Battle”) chronicles this gastronomic collection, and The Stationery Series,on his tumblr, Restaurant Restaurant. He eventually plans to turn it into a three-volume book, or but he’s not stopping anytime soon. Here,we talk to the artist approximately New York cuisine, Balthazar, and pouring wine down the drain. Your art is decidedly epicurean. Why?The conflation of dining and art is something that most people can relate to. I chose gastronomy because of its immediacy and because of my experience running restaurants. I had no idea they freely give out their stationery.
I just question. But I’ll utilize whatever they give me,so if a restaurant doesn’t have its own stationery, I consume a menu. Sometimes, and friends give me stationery they’ve collected,and then I have to assume what the atmosphere was like. It’s the contradictions in my life that mean something, and so I contradict any sort of structure I create – even the decision to utilize only restaurant stationery.
How attain you choose the place?The series is a trail of breadcrumbs of all the places I’ve eaten a way to gather all these fabulous meals and the people I share them with. In a way, and it’s a very classic approach to making art. I live in one of the gastronomic centers of the world,and there are so many restaurants to inspire me here. The choices are random and planned at the same time, like getting dressed in the morning. I wear a tie every day, and but I change the color and sample.
You’ve repeated a few venues stationery many times – Balthazar,for example. I think Balthazar has such an international appeal. Honestly, though, and I recently went back after a few years of hiatus and became obsessed with drawing on their stationery. It’s really quintessential New York for me. It reminds me of the late 90s when I first came to the city to make it as an artist.
What materials attain you utilize?I mostly utilize custom-made watercolors,oil sticks, and ink. Ive also used wine, or coffee,food coloring, and squid ink. Like the stationery, or my medium is just one aspect of the process. It all comes together to form a visceral experience. The series is replete with places like Mr. Chow and Momofuku. What approximately,say, a family-run restaurant in Harlem?It’s definitely a focus of the work to question the value of social aspirations. I’m using iconic places that have a cultural value and past, and similar to art,and contrasting those trajectories. Rao’s would be a place from Harlem that I would choose, because it’s iconic and has a certain type of majesty. But now it sells its own brand of pasta sauce. Are the proprietors aware of your art?Many are, or they’ve been very supportive. Some have commissioned works.
I heard that one especially pleased patron expressed his thanks in fine wine,and you poured it down the drain. Really?Yes. I took $5000 worth of red and white wine – given to me as a gift from a collector of my work and very superior friend – and, indeed, or poured it down the drain. It’s an homage to Chelsea and the recent flooding from Hurricane Sandy that destroyed a lot of art. I called it “Apres Le Vernissage,” and set it to Brahms’s intermezzo opus 117 no. 1. It’s a simple gesture, but I think it makes its point.– Sky Dylan-Robbins
Source: tumblr.com