JAKE TROYLI: FINE LINE
From September 10th through February 28th, 2025, Project for Empty Space presented Fine Line, a solo exhibition by Artist In Residence Jake Troyli at PES at Ironside Newark (110 Edison Pl.)
A series of monochromatic drawings juxtaposed with two murals, one of which was interactive, Fine Line marked a unique change of pace for Troyli, who was known for his grand paintings with smooth, saturated, bold colors. The drawings, inspired by his love for political cartoons and MAD magazine, honored the technique that served as the foundation for his visual practice. Fine Line was the first exhibition in which Troyli’s drawings were the focal point and were shown as their own body of work. The figures teetered on a fine line, vibrating between hypervulnerability and empowerment as they moved through the drawn vignettes. Troyli considered the figures to be self-portraits—elastic avatars that he could manipulate, bend, and pose with full agency. Placed in settings in which they held varying degrees of power, Troyli’s figures challenged the reality of shape-shifting and code-switching. Using humor and formal techniques, Troyli opened accessible windows into larger conceptual considerations. Viewers were invited to contemplate the conscious and subconscious practice of constructing and manipulating one’s identity, and to further examine what that meant in a global social context. Fine Line called into question the performance of self and what it meant to be on display.
Troyli notes: “I didn’t grow up going to museums and galleries. I grew up looking at MAD magazine and political cartoons, and so drawing has always been at the center of my practice. There’s something special in their immediacy, the 1 to 1 transmission of an idea or an image onto a surface, removed from the labor and history of making a painting. Paying homage to the comic strips and cartoons that helped form my visual language, I was thinking a lot about how the drawings could read like frames in an abstracted storyboard. Illustrated and presented non-sequentially, but still all part of an overarching timeline, the “self” at the center of the narrative contorts and shifts itself into new roles and positions throughout this body of work.”
For the two large-scale works in the show, Jake Troyli employed the technical rigor of Northern Renaissance paintings, which were important to his practice. Reminiscent of medieval tapestries, the large-scale works were maximalist and complex, composed of many smaller vignettes that encouraged thoughtful viewership, and were echoed and recontextualized in the smaller drawings. The interactive piece served as a response to Project for Empty Space’s mission of accessibility and community. The organization’s Artist in Residency program existed to uplift artists interested in social engagement. Troyli’s mural did just that and acted as a formal exercise for the artist that was visually exciting for both himself and the viewers who chose to interact with it.
About Jake Troyli
Jake Troyli’s practice interrogates the performance of identity, the commodification of the Black and Brown body, and the elasticity of selfhood within systems of spectacle and labor. Drawing from the technical rigor of Northern Renaissance painting, Troyli employs classical techniques—such as underpainting and toning—to create vibrant, theatrical compositions that fuse self-portraiture with social critique. His figures, often avatars of himself, are rendered with exaggerated, elastic forms, symbolizing the pressures of code-switching and the blurring line between subject and object. In his recent series Collision Course, developed during his residency at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Troyli expands his exploration of identity by incorporating a broader cast of characters and symbols. These works delve into humanity's fixation on conflict and the narratives of heroism and villainy, presenting figures that function simultaneously as subject and sacrifice. The compositions, reminiscent of community theater sets, position the viewer as an audience to the ongoing performance of identity and societal roles. Troyli's work is characterized by its bold use of color, dynamic compositions, and the integration of humor and absurdity to challenge preconceived notions of value and identity. By positioning his figures as performing commodities, constantly on display, he invites viewers to reflect on the structures that define and often confine individual and collective identities.
Jake Troyli (b.1990, Boston, MA) played Division 1 basketball at Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC before receiving his BFA from Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, TN (2013), and his MFA from the University of South Florida, Tampa (2019). He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME in 2019. Solo exhibitions include moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL (2024, 2022); Tempus Projects, Tampa, FL (2018); and ArtsXchange, Atlanta, GA (2018). Troyli’s work has been featured in group exhibitions at Perrotin Gallery, New York, NY (2024); Galerie Droste, Düsseldorf, DE (2024); Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI (2023-24); Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY (2023); Galerie Droste, Paris, FR (2021); The Ringling Museum, Sarasota, FL (2021); Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL (2019); San Francisco Art Institute, CA (2018). Troyli’s work is currently included in the group exhibition Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture, curated by Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, Seph Rodney, and Katy Siegel, at SFMoMA, which travels to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Pérez Art Museum Miami and will be accompanied by a scholarly publication. Troyli’s first museum solo exhibition will occur in 2027 at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL.
His work is in the permanent collections of the Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY; Tampa Art Museum, Tampa, FL; the Ringling Museum, Sarasota, FL; the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; and Pierce and Hill Harper Arts Foundation, Detroit, MI. He is the recipient of the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship (2019-2020) and the Creative Pinellas Emerging Artist Grant, Largo, FL (2017). Troyli was a 2023 Visual Artist recipient of the Academy of Fine Arts x International City of Arts program in Paris, France. He is currently an artist in residence at Project for Empty Space in Newark, NJ.