jay rechsteiner

Profile

Jay Rechsteiner (born 1971, Basel, Switzerland) lives and works in Margate, UK. His practice moves between painting, drawing, video, performance, text, and object-making, combining conceptual structures with intuitive processes.

For more than a decade, Rechsteiner developed the Bad Painting series, a body of faux-naïf works addressing historical and contemporary violence through the uneasy coexistence of text and image. This long-term project sharpened his interest in the tension between beauty and brutality, intimacy and distance, and the instability of meaning.

He is currently at a turning point in his practice, moving away from the fixed logic of that series toward a more open, process-led approach. Recent work includes blind masks that obstruct vision, fragmented texts, and provisional objects that resist resolution. Rather than working toward predetermined outcomes, the practice unfolds through making, asking how objects bear witness and how material, language, and form shape truth, fiction, and memory.

Curriculum Vitae

Born 1971, Basel, Switzerland
Based in Margate, UK

Awards

  • 2025 — Shortlisted, Jackson Art Prize
  • 2024 — Winner, Alpine Fellowship Visual Arts Prize
  • 2017 — Finalist, Anthology, Charlie Smith Gallery, London
  • 2000 — Shortlisted, 34th Fukuoka-City Art Exhibition, Fukuoka Art Museum

Selected Exhibitions & Projects

  • 2023 — DIKTAT: DAS BÖSE, Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin
  • 2022 — Aktionale IV, Haus der Künstler, Berlin
  • 2021–22 — Turner Contemporary Open, Turner Contemporary, Margate
  • 2020 — Unleashed Speed Unleashed Speech (MISFITS), Kotaro Nukaga Gallery, Tokyo
  • 2020 — Global Conversations, United Nations UN75 (virtual)
  • 2019 — Bad Video Art Festival III, Zverev Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow
  • 2018 — At the Violet Hour, Nayland Rock Hotel, Margate
  • 2017 — Anthology 2017, Charlie Smith Gallery, London
  • 2011 — Afternoon Tea, WW Gallery, 54th Venice Biennale
  • 2009 — Travelling Light, WW Gallery, 53rd Venice Biennale

Selected Projects / Institutional Presentations

  • 2007 — Washroom Talks, Tate Liverpool
  • 2015–16 — The Red Van, travelling residency and exhibitions across Europe

Residencies

  • 2023 — Family Tattoo, Southeast Asia (travel residency)
  • 2015 — The Red Van, travelling research residency, Europe
  • 2012 — monoloqueArt, La maison du comédien, Alloue, France

Collaborative Projects

  • The Washroom Projects (2005–2006) — participatory performance events in public and institutional spaces
  • zeiTraum (from 2005) — research-based collaborative project exploring value and authorship
  • Washroom Talks (from 2007) — video discussions on art, hosted in public and private spaces
  • Sardine & Tobleroni (2005–2012) — collaborative practice with Victor “Torpedo” Silveira

Full exhibition history available on request.