Throughout his materially innovative and richly conceptual practice, Jay Heikes (b. 1975; Princeton, NJ) continuously reimagines an atlas of signs and symbols and stories, largely of his own devising. Drawing on art’s divergent histories—from the material and alchemical preoccupations of Arte Povera to the revolutionary critique of Russian Constructivism to the Romantic fascination with the sublime—Heikes examines themes of evolution and regeneration, stasis and corrosion, entropy and transformation. Acknowledging that there are no truly new ideas to be had, Heikes turns to what has already been; his practice is in a continual state of borrowing, transposing, appropriating, and reinterpreting old ideas and forms and narratives using a kaleidoscopic array of media, remaining perpetually open to transformation within his work and within himself.
Heikes’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE; the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, CA; the Aspen Art Museum, CO; and the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, PA. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; the Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY. He was also featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, curated by Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY. Heikes earned an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from the University of Michigan. The artist lives in St. Paul and works in Minneapolis, MN.