Jay Rechsteiner

Lives and works in Margate, UK

Artist statement

My practice moves between painting, text, photography, video, installation and social projects. I am interested in how meaning forms through images, language, memory, encounters and processes that are not fully controlled in advance. Some works begin with events in the world, others with personal history, found material, conversation or an intuitive act of making. A recurring concern is the relationship between control and emergence. I often establish a structure or starting point and then allow the work to develop through what happens within it: between people, between image and text, between past and present, or between intention and accident. Language plays an important role in much of my work, as does the instability of interpretation. I am interested in statements, images and situations that can shift depending on context and resist being reduced to a single meaning. Across different media, I am drawn to work that remains open enough for something unexpected to appear.

Artwork