Jonathan Gardner

Jonathan Gardner’s highly stylized paintings joyfully reference a wealth of 20th-century art—from Henri Matisse’s interiors and René Magritte’s distinct objects to Pablo Picasso’s geometric bodies and Georges Seurat’s relaxed bathers. Featuring representational and Surrealist-esque imagery, his collage-like compositions are united by a spatial flatness. Gardner’s background line patterns and grids serve as wallpaper, flooring, and windows, and the artist renders clothing, furniture, houseplants, and body parts in rich palettes. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited in New York, Paris, Seoul, Berlin, London, and Miami, among other cities. His work has sold for six figures on the secondary market. In addition to his large-scale paintings, Gardner has also produced smaller drawings with the same flattened surrealistic imagery.