Sunchoke

Paul Petro Contemporary Art is pleased to present Sunchoke, an exhibition of new paintings by Jay Isaac. Here is a text from the artist:

Sunchoke examines the viability of artistic production during current environmental degradation due to capitalism. The paintings are equal parts dystopian and utopian and describe a post-capitalist reality where human relationships to nature are reimagined. Like the art historical precedents of Pointillism and Neo-Impressionism which sought to represent a utopian world after capitalism was made obsolete, the narratives in Sunchoke imagine a post-ecocide world where nature once again becomes autonomous and its relationship to humans exists outside of a transactional framework.

The title Sunchoke refers to the sunflower with edible tuber, also known as the Jerusalem artichoke. It is a plant native to Canada so it cannot be referred to as “invasive”, but it is aggressive and spreads easily. It was renamed sunchoke in the 1960s by Frieda Rapoport Caplan, an American businesswoman and produce wholesaler who saw the potential to make it a mainstream food. The title Sunchoke metaphorically aligns the aggressive nature of the namesake plant with the imagining of a persistent natural force existing after human induced ecological collapse. Furthermore, the commodification of a native vegetable/plant refers to the monetization of nature by humans, whereas in the post-ecocide utopian narrative, the sunchoke, like its non-human kin, reasserts itself outside of the realm of human control.

The narratives in the paintings have been constructed and complicated through the consideration of economic and environmental concerns contradicting each other. They consider the question, “Can a painting operate as anti-capitalist, or does the weight of imbued history as luxury object negate potential as an activist tool?”

The paintings in Sunchoke are proposals that imagine the termination of capitalism and human supremacy and posit the capacity of painting to function beyond aesthetic enjoyment. The complications and contradictions of communicating through the medium of painting produces material and conceptual problems that attempt to accurately convey the reality of art production in this moment.


JAY ISAAC (b. 1975, Saint John, NB) is a multi-disciplinary artist of Lebanese and Irish descent. He studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, Canada (1993-1997) and the Cardiff Institute of Art, Cardiff, Wales (1996).

Notable exhibitions at Galleria d’art moderna di Bologna, Bologna; MOCA Toronto; James Fuentes LLC, NYC; Mercer Union, Toronto; Galerie Kunstbuero, Vienna; The Power Plant, Toronto; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB; White Columns, NYC; Cue Art Foundation, NYC; Agnes Etherington Art Center, Kingston, ON; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; The AGO, Toronto; CAG, Vancouver; Night Gallery, LA; Monte Clark Gallery, Toronto/Vancouver; Galleri Benoni, Copenhagen; McIntosh Gallery, London, ON; Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.

Isaac was co-founder and publisher of Hunter and Cook Magazine (2009-2011), and ran the @nationalgalleryofcanada Instagram account (2015-2016) and the @newbrunswickartistarchive Instagram account 2022-present. He was the founder and co-director of Peter Estey Fine Art (2018-2023), an artist-run dealership focusing on secondary market folk, outsider, Inuit and Canadian art.

Isaac has been the recipient of numerous awards including most recently: New Brunswick Arts Board Creation Grants (2025, 2024, 2023), Canada Council Concept to Realization and Research and Creation Grants (2022), Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2021), and the Chalmers Art Fellowship (2019).

Isaac’s work can be found in public and corporate collections in Canada including the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, The Royal Bank of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound, ON and the Ivey School of Business Collection at Western University. Isaac is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto, and lives and works in Rowley, New Brunswick.