Jeffrey Morabito

I’m aiming for the image that is awkward, uncomfortable, or feels off, to profit from its ability to puncture one’s psyche. The juxtapositions in imagery in fashion, advertisements, info-graphics in signs, windows, and reflections in glass interest me greatly. 

I hope that if someone is able to take a step into the stage that is my painting, the narrative that was previously being formed from the recognizable elements will be slowly but surely, undone. The backdrop becomes the actor, while the actor becomes the backdrop.

Jeffrey Morabito 

Born in Bronxville, half Hong Kong-ese and half Italian, Jeffrey Morabito spent his early years traveling between New York and Hong Kong. He returned to Asia in 2006, to apprentice with a calligraphy master in Seoul, South. Korea. This allowed Morabito’s painting to be reevaluated into its most basic elements of individual brush strokes. He then spent six years in Beijing, beginning with a Red Gate Gallery Residency, in 2009, while teaching art at Capital Normal University. Morabito returned to New York in 2016 to pursue an MFA at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, while also founding JMN Artists, a curatorial collective, which has produced three shows in New York. 

Morabito has exhibited in “Art Beijing;” International Art Fair and Matthius Kupper Gallery, Beijing, China; N-Space and Jay Gallery Seoul, South Korea; Rosenfeld Gallery Philadelphia; Projektraum Knut Osper, Cologne, Germany; and in Eric Firestone Loft, SFA Projects and M.David & Co., New York. In 2019, he had a retrospective of his work entitled “Glossolalia” curated by Karen Wilkin at 1 GAP gallery. 

A recipient of the Art Cake Studio Program, he currently works in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.