UPCOMING:
JAKE TROYLI’S FINE LINE
Project for Empty Space is pleased to announce the solo exhibition Fine Line by 2025 Artist In Residence Jake Troyli, opening to the public starting September 10th, 2025, at PES at 800 Broad Street, Newark, NJ, with a reception from 5 pm-7 pm.
A series of monochromatic drawings juxtaposed with two murals, one of which will be interactive, Fine Line is a unique change of pace for Troyli who is known for his grand paintings with smooth, saturated, bold colors. The drawings, inspired by his love for political cartoons and MAD magazine, honor the technique that serves as the foundation for his visual practice. Fine Line is the first exhibition where Troyli’s drawings are the focal point and shown as their own body of work. The figures teeter on a fine line, vibrating between hypervulnerability and empowerment as they move through the drawn vignettes. Troyli considers the figures self-portraits, elastic avatars that he can manipulate, bend, and pose with full agency. Placed in settings in which they hold varying degrees of power, Troyli’s figures challenge the reality of shape-shifting and code-switching. Using humor and formal techniques, Troyli opens accessible windows into larger conceptual considerations. Viewers are invited to contemplate the conscious and subconscious practice of constructing and manipulating one’s identity, and further examine what that means in a global social context. Fine Line calls into question the performance of self and what it means 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 employs the technical rigour of Northern Renaissance paintings, which are important to his practice. Reminiscent of medieval tapestries, the large-scale works are maximalist and complex, composed of many smaller vignettes that encourage thoughtful viewership, and are echoed and recontextualized in the smaller drawings. The interactive piece serves as a response to Project for Empty Space’s mission of accessibility and community. The organization’s Artist In Residency program exists to uplift artists interested in social engagement. Troyli’s mural does just that and acts as a formal exercise for the artist that is visually exciting for both himself and the viewers who choose 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.