Jonathan Trayte: Fruiting Habits

J O N AT H A N T R AY T E FRUITING HABITS

Promiscuous Consumption

Of course Trayte goes far beyond a simple re-creation of product branding, like some latter day Pop artist.

Glenn Adamson

He may begin his designs with standard issue commodities as reference material, but once they have been put through the sausage grinder of his process, the results attain a wholly alien quality. And as much as he

“The work that I tend to make comes together all at once, like a cast of characters. There’s always some

is fluent in the language of commercial exchange, he stands firmly outside it, deconstructing and reordering

weird older brother, the ‘black sheep,’ that doesn’t quite fit.” That is how Jonathan Trayte described his

it much as an anthropologist might try to make sense of tribal customs.

working process when I met with him in his London studio, earlier this year. Now that his exhibition Fruiting

Habits has actually arrived, though, it seems right to extend the metaphor: the show is full to bursting, not

Witness Gol Gol, for example, a lighting design of last year and an important precedent to the works in the

just with black sheep, but pink wieners, yellow trees, juicy oranges, and a ruddy light-up melon.

exhibition. Three bright orange orbs are held aloft on spindly rods, offered up like lollipops. They sprout from a garden-like bed of crushed granite, which also provides a habitat for a handful of finger-like soft

It’s a weird world, Trayte’s. Yet it is also recognizable. His abiding concern is with everyday contemporary

pink appendages. A final, zany touch is provided by a tube of blue neon which races round the base. It’s

consumerism and its operations, its appealing gaudiness and latent slapstick humor. His hilarious carpet Big

a collision of suggestive forms, sitting comfortably neither in the domain of representation nor abstraction.

Feature, for example, reminds me of a time when my nieces were young and easily bored, and my brother

On one level the design makes no sense—one cannot decode it as if it were a rebus. Yet every touch feels

and I invented a competition to make trips to the supermarket more entertaining. We called it the “Gross

exactly right. The pathetic phallic growths, the rude health of the looming orbs, the electrical zap of the

Game.” The rules were simple: each team has five minutes to find the most disgusting thing they can. My

neon: they seem ingredients in a mad scientist’s experiment which has unexpectedly succeeded. My God…

sister-in-law was on hand to arbitrate, but the winner was usually clear enough. Often it involved a meat

it’s alive.

product in a can. My nieces have now grown (the older one became a vegetarian). But at the time, the Gross

Except we’re not in the laboratory, in this show; we’re right at

Game served its purpose admirably. Not just a way to be the fun uncle, it was also curiously educational, a

home. Boca Chita has the general appearance of a kitchen

crash course in the sheer strangeness of what’s down the next aisle.

island gone a-wandering. Its gently contoured work surface is embellished with appendages that would be strictly utilitarian, if

Trayte’s work holds a similarly lurid appeal. For him the produce section, the racks of tinned goods, are

one only knew what they were for. A little lightbulb punctuates the

aesthetic quarry, ready to be mined. He is particularly fascinated by packaging of all kinds, not just the

composition, doing more or less what a nose does for a clown.

cheap-and-cheerful variety that is found in Britain, but also the idioms of other countries: some bright and

We see a variant of this gesture in Tal Tal, too, an indeterminate

bushy-tailed, others densely chromatic or harshly declarative. Where other artists keep a sketchbook, he

tabletop item with four denuded corn cobs stood next to a

has a ring binder of laminated labels that he’s collected on his travels. “The language is region-specific,

Cadbury’s chocolate orange in a half-peeled state. At least, that’s

though food is a universal need,” he says. “What interests me the most is that these layers of design are

one way to read it. Certainly something in this lamp is coming,

carefully orchestrated, to make us consume in a particular way.”

on or off.

Jonathan Trayte, Gol Gol, 2017

And then there’s Kandi, with two winsome willows overlooking a miniature pink landscape. It too has a kind

Incredibly, despite this variety, Trayte executes all his work himself with only occasional part-time assistance.

of perfection about it, yet its linear elements have the jumpy, jaunty quality of a quick sketch in felt-tipped

He has come by his breadth of expertise honestly, having worked himself as a fabricator and foundry

pen. It’s an effect that Trayte captures again and again in this new body of work, often using bent tubular

specialist—he knows all about making work for other artists. Further back in time, he trained as a stone

steel. Since Marcel Breuer, this material has been closely associated with modernist functionalism. In this

carver (yes, people still do that) and also was employed as a sous-chef. He says he probably learned his

show, though, it is a vehicle for a wonky and highly distinctive draftsmanship in three dimensions. Often

most relevant skills in the kitchen, making morcia from buckets of pig blood, stirring it by hand so it didn’t

he paints the metal in colors that skirt the hideous, yet are somehow delectable. The resulting, completely

stiffen before it got to the stovetop. Even in our cross-disciplinary moment in design, he has an unusually

winning effect is seen in Trayte’s seating designs in particular— High Desert Chair, and the aqueous quartet

anti-hierarchical attitude: “paint and food pigments, plaster and flour, sugar and silica, they all appear the

Ocean Pointe, Noda Ball, Ewa Reef, and Kapolei. Then there is the show’s titular work, Fruiting Habits, which

same to me. Only some are more permanent than others.”

has the psychedelic intensity of a fever dream in a hospital bed. The steel, partly coated in plaster, races around the head and foot as if searching out quarry—which it perhaps finds in the pendant lamp, ideally

Thorstein Veblen, who first formulated the theory of conspicuous consumption a little more than a century

placed for night-time reading.

ago, held simply that “The motive that lies at the root of ownership is emulation.” Trayte is operating from a different premise. Consumerism is rampant,that is for sure. But in our era of immediate gratification and

Establishing Trayte’s precursors is deceptively difficult, partly because they are so numerous. Art historically,

cheap calories, when the very term “luxury” is primarily a down-market indicator, the meaning of what it is

he’s an omnivore. One can certainly detect the influence of artists who dwell in abjection, like Sarah Lucas

to consume has changed. The psychology is more complicated. Status and class are less at issue. Instead,

and Mike Kelley. His high-key color and half-arbitrary, half-perfectionist manner might prompt thoughts of Studio Alchymia and Memphis (Weekend Special, for example, recalls Michele De Lucchi’s 1982 Lido sofa), and before them Lapo Binazzi of Gruppo UFO. There are design notes of a more middlebrow sort, too, the telephone tables and typewriter stands of the midcentury era. Oddly enough, the most satisfying comparisons lie much further back in time, in the fecund creations of baroque decorative art: the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, with their anthropomorphically arranged squashes and cabbages; the heaving vegetal glory of 17th century ceramic centerpieces.

We too are living in baroque times, of course, times of wretched excess. This is reflected not only in Trayte’s imagery, but also the almost manic proliferation of mediums that appear in his work. Even a partial list of the show’s contents would have to include bronze, steel, foam, plaster, ceramic, photographic wallpaper, neon, stone, flocking, and pigment—and each of these is handled slightly differently in different sculptures. The “supermarket of styles” that was inaugurated in postmodernism here finds its material match.

questions of personal desire come to the fore, and with them, the reality of pervasive manipulation. Trayte paints a picture of this contemporary pageant, with all its guilty pleasures and attendant anxieties. His objects positively vibrate with that inherent conflict; nor are they exempted from the system. His work, too, is something to be consumed. And as a viewer of Trayte’s exhibition, there’s only one way to go. Swallow it whole.

WORKS

Fruiting Habits, 2018 Powder-coated steel, polymer plaster, pigments, birch plywood, fabric, light fitting 77.5 x 66.5 x 84 inches 197 x 169 x 213 cm Unique

High Desert Chair, 2018 Powder-coated steel, stainless steel, painted bronze, birch ply, leather, animal hide 33 x 30 x 22 inches 84 x 76 x 56 cm Unique

Mint Rola and Lamp, 2018 Powder-coated steel, stainless steel, bronze, marble, granite, birch plywood, animal hide, fabrics, upholstery, light fitting 66 x 40 x 66 inches 168 x 102 x 168 cm Unique

Cola Kurri, 2018 Powder-coated steel, stainless steel, bronze, polymer plaster, pigments, crushed marble, animal hide, leather, beech, rosewood, light fitting 48 x 40.5 x 42 inches 122 x 103 x 107 cm Unique

Weekend Special, 2018 Powder-coated steel, stainless steel, birch plywood, marble, animal hide, fabrics, upholstery, light fitting 60.75 x 75 x 35.5 inches 154 x 190 x 90 cm Unique

Booti Stools, 2018 Powder-coated steel, patent leather, rubber Each stool: 18.5 x 20 x 12.5 inches 47 x 51 x 32 cm Unique

Wawa Island, 2018 Marble, granite, powder-coated steel, stainless steel, concrete, light fitting 38 x 31.5 x 27.5 inches 97 x 80 x 70 cm

Woolly Poof, 2018 Pig suede, animal hide, upholstery fabrics, beads, birch ply, castors 22 x 20 x 20 inches 56 x 51 x 51 cm Unique

Big Feature, 2018 Silk, wool, nylon 68 x 71 inches 173 x 180 cm Unique

Tropical Suggestions, 2018 Powder-coated steel, stainless steel, black iron, polymer plaster, pigments, crushed marble, castors, cactus 76.5 x 30 x 30 inches 194 x 76 x 76 cm Unique

Combination Coconut Table, 2018 Marble, granite, powder-coated steel, stainless steel, polished bronze, nylon weave, light fitting 31.25 x 56 x 31 inches 80 x 142 x 79 cm Unique

Pink Mondi with Bomba Lamp, 2018 Marble, granite, powder-coated steel, stainless steel, chrome, birch plywood, polymer plaster, pigments, painted and polished bronze, mirror, light fitting 52.75 x 48.75 x 23.5 inches 134 x 124 x 60 cm Unique

Bulo Bulo, 2017 Marble, slate, granite, powder-coated steel, bronze, light fitting 47.25 x 36.5 x 58.5 inches 120 x 93 x 148 cm Unique

Midway Console and Large White Custard, 2018 Marble, granite, powder-coated steel, stainless steel, polymer plaster, pigments, painted and polished bronze, nylon weave, light fittings 72 x 78.5 x 17.5 inches 183 x 200 x 45 cm Unique

Loma Lamp, 2018 Painted bronze, stainless steel, polymer plaster, pigments, crushed granite, light fitting 95 x 20 x 20 inches 241 x 51 x 51 cm Unique

Tan Nsoko, 2018 Painted bronze, stainless steel, foam, polymer plaster, pigments, nylon flock, crushed marble, neon, light fitting 42 x 39.5 x 15.75 inches 107 x 100 x 40 cm Unique

Velvet Straight-Neck, 2018 Painted bronze, powder coated steel, stainless steel, polymer plaster, pigments, silica, crushed marble 86.75 x 18.5 x 18.5 inches 220 x 47 x 47 cm Unique

Kandi, 2018 Painted bronze, stainless steel, foam, polymer plaster, pigments, nylon flock, neon 42.5 x 43.25 x 13.75 inches 108 x 110 x 35 cm Unique

Baby Boo, 2018 Painted bronze, light fitting 25 x 13.5 x 12.5 inches 63 x 34 x 32 cm Unique

Tal Tal, 2018 Painted bronze, stainless steel, foam, polymer plaster, pigments, nylon flock, crushed marble, fused silica, light fitting 21.25 x 35.5 x 11 inches 54 x 90 x 28 cm Unique

White Moon Mirror, 2018 Bronze, aluminum, stainless steel, nylon flock, rubber, paint, mirrored glass 53 x 44 x 7 inches 135 x 112 x 18 cm Unique

Noda Ball, 2018 Powder-coated steel, stainless steel, bronze, leather, alder 33.25 x 21.5 x 22 inches 84.5 x 55 x 56 cm Unique

Ewa Reef, 2018 Powder-coated steel, stainless steel, bronze, leather, elm 36.5 x 21.25 x 23 inches 93 x 54 x 58 cm Unique

Kapolei, 2018 Powder-coated steel, stainless steel, bronze, leather, alder 35.5 x 19.5 x 24 inches 90 x 49.5 x 61 cm Unique

Ocean Pointe, 2018 Powder-coated steel, stainless steel, bronze, leather, beech 38.5 x 22 x 23 inches 98 x 56 x 58 cm Unique

Bomba, 2018 Painted bronze 14 x 5 x 5 inches 36 x 13 x 13 cm Unique

Bread, 2018 Ceramic 9.5 x 4 x 4.25 inches 24 x 10 x 11 cm Unique

Bread, 2018 Ceramic 3 x 5 x 14.5 inches 8 x 13 x 37 cm Unique

Eggs, 2018 Ceramic 3.25 x 7 x 4 inches 8 x 18 x 10 cm Unique

Milk, 2018 Glass, foil, pigmented silcone 7 x 3.25 x 3.25 inches 18 x 8 x 8 cm Unique

Pickles, 2018 Found glass jar and lid, silicone oil, cast tinted resin, mustard seeds 8.5 x 6 x 6 inches 22 x 15 x 15 cm Unique

Winter Horn, 2018 Ceramic 4 x 23 x 6 inches 10 x 58 x 15 cm Unique

Island Bananas, 2018 Aluminum 4 x 8 x 6.5 inches 10 x 20 x 16.5 cm Unique

Select Group Exhibitions 2018

The London Open 2018, Whitechapel Gallery, London, England Dream Works: Jordan Kasey, Luke Rudolf, Jonathan Trayte & Madelon Vriesendorp, Kate Macgarry, London, England

2017

Tropicana, Christies, London, England You see me like a UFO, Marcelle Joseph Projects, Ascot, Berkshire, England Ambiguous Implements, Roco, Sheffield, England Identify your Limitations, Acknowledge the Periphery, Vitrine Basel, Switzerland

2016

Milk – A café with Lavazza Fashion Arts Foundation Commission, Christies, London, England

Table, Tannery Projects, London, England Closer to the Veg, Fitzroy Allotments, London, England Gradation, AF Projects, London, England

JONATHAN TRAYTE

2015

WFWI Sculpture Event, Bonhams, London, England

Present

Lives and works in London

One Night Stand Exhibition with Maciej Urbanek, Clapton, London, England

2010

Royal Academy Schools, Postgraduate Diploma Fine Art

Shoppers Guide ConverseXDazed Artist Award, Royal Academy of Arts, London,

2004

Kent Institute of Art and Design, Fine Art BFA

England

1980

Born in Huddersfield, England

2014

A Union of Voices, Horatio Jnr, London, England Flat Packed, Punk and Sheep, London, England Shack Site-specific catering project, Focal Point Gallery, Essex, England

Select Solo Exhibitions 2013

Alignment, Backlit Gallery, Nottingham, England

2018

Jonathan Trayte: Fruiting Habits, Friedman Benda, New York, NY

2017-18

SCHUSSBOOMER, Castor Projects, Deptford, London, England

Sculpture Alfresco, Marcelle Joseph Projects, Surrey, England

2016

Polyculture, The Tetley, Leeds, England

Commission for Shrimpy’s, London, England

Experiments in Consuming, The Kings School, Canterbury, England

Miart Milan, Josh Lilley Gallery, Milan, Italy 2012

NADA Art Fair Miami, Josh Lilley Gallery, Miami, Florida

2014

Pazar, Marcelle Joseph Projects and Istanbul Art Project, Istanbul, Turkey

2011

Nude, Identity Gallery, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

Commission for Bistrotheque, London, England

In the Presence of Nature, Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, England

Bryn Lloyd-Evans, John Nielsen, Jonathan Trayte, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, England

Under a Pine Tree, Simon Oldfield Gallery, London, England

Dependent Art Fair 2012, James Fuentes Gallery, New York, NY 2011

Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Site Gallery, Sheffield and ICA, London, England

Restrike, Poppy Sebire Gallery, London, England 2010

New Contemporary Art, George and Jorgen, London, England Assembly, Bearspace, London, England Modern Love, Simon Oldfield Gallery, London, England Show One, AF Projects, London, England Royal Academy Schools Show, Royal Academy of Arts, London, England Franks-Suss Collection, Saatchi Gallery, London, England

2009

Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Cornerhouse, Man. and Rochelle School, London, England

Five Hundred Dollars, Vyner Street, London, England Premiums Interim Show, Royal Academy of Arts, London, England Awards and Residencies 2018

Selected for the London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London, England Morning Boat Residency, Jersey, Channel Islands

2016

Fashion Arts Foundation Award - British Fashion Council, London, England Artist in Residence Kings School, Canterbury, England

2015

Converse X Dazed Emerging Artist Award

2014

Shortlisted for Hiscox City of London Sculpture Commission Time Out Istanbul Residency and Solo Show, Istanbul, Turkey

2013

Shortlisted for Stanley Picker Fellowship

2011

Land Securities Award

2010

Dunoyer de Segonzac Prize Jealous Graduate Print Prize Ceilia Walker Foundation

2009

Landseer Prize Ceilia Walker Foundation

J O N AT H A N T R AY T E FRUITING HABITS

Design: Olivia Swider Photography by: Dan Kukla and Timothy Doyon

Published by Friedman Benda 515 West 26th Street New York, NY 10001 Tel. + 1 212 239 8700 www.friedmanbenda.com Content copyright of Friedman Benda and the artist.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition, Fruiting Habits, June 21 - July 27, 2018.