Please note our new location;
72 Walker Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10013
(Entrance on Cortlandt Alley between Walker and Canal)
Open Wednesday-Saturday, 12-6pm
Jay Payton
The Cruel and Violent Nature of Domesticated Homo Sapiens
15 Orient
October 30th - December 6th
Opening Reception;
Thursday, October 30th, 9th, 6-9pm
15 Orient is happy to announce the opening of “The Cruel and Violent Nature of the Domesticated Homo Sapiens”, a solo-exhibition by New York based artist Jay Payton.
Comprising a suite of works made over the past year, the exhibition marks a new turn in the artist’s ongoing investigation into the nature of abstraction as both an art-historical concept and a real phenomenological process. Having previously approached the term in relation to biology and the emergence of life, here Payton considers its etymological root—to draw away by force—as a figure of violence and extirpation.
“The Cruel and Violent Nature of the Domesticated Homo Sapiens” marks the artist’s first show with 15 Orient.
Jay Payton (b. 1992) is a painter living and working in New York. His work contemplates the development of the human experience through research into biology, anthropology, technology, and a wide range of other subjects. By using both traditional and non traditional mediums, he seeks to navigate how abstract painting can be visualized in the 21st century and beyond. Recent solo exhibitions include; “A Gentle Kiss to the Anterior Fontanelle”, 2025, at Seaview (Los Angeles), “The Infinitesimal Man and His Ephemeral Existence”, 2024, at Gern en Regalia (New York). Recent group show exhibitions include; “No Diagnosis: Drawings by Painters”, 2025, at Reena Spaulings (New York), “In Media Res”, 2025, at Derosia (New York), “Naked City”, 2024, at Silke Linder (New York). In addition to receiving an MFA from CCA, San Francisco and a BFA from Georgia State University, Atlanta, he is the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships including the Barclay Simpson Award, RITE Edition Scholarship, and a Leroy Hoffberger School of Painting Scholarship California College of the Arts Merit Scholarship.