Jonathan Ball on Painting and Exclusivity

An interview between Jonathan Ball and Mélanie Grenier

Jonathan Ball is a young Canadian artist currently living and working in Toronto, Canada. In 2010 he has received an emerging artist award from the Ontario Arts Council. Current Artsline editor Mélanie Grenier asked him to talk about his work and exclusive relationship with the Liss Gallery in Toronto.

If you ask Jonathan, he describes his work as Sci-fi Neo Expressionism, or Neo Expressionistic Futurism. He wants his work to be perceived as dark but hopeful, and beautiful but ugly. Indeed, to look at most of his work requires a pause, a moment to take the image in and absorb what one is witnessing. His work is sublime, colorful, evocative, but most of all inspiring.

His work is exclusively shown at Liss Gallery located in Toronto’s Yorkville area, a trendy and chic neighborhood. This location allows new audiences and a more international clientele to view his work mainly due to its location in Toronto. Yorkville Avenue is an internationally known street comparable to Rodeo Drive in L.A. or Broadway Avenue in New York. It is an artist ambition to have work carried by a reputable gallery in a prestigious area. Jonathan describes this exclusive relationship as a good fit: his paintings are unique enough to stand out and good enough to fit in.

Relationships between galleries and artists can range from one-time commitments to multi-year contracts with stipends and formal production timeframes. When considering exclusivity, artists face numerous decisions to define the notion of exclusivity in their contract with a gallery. Considerations range from exclusivity with dealing with one gallery to aspects of the selling capacity to exclusivity defined by location such as city or state or country. Of course this does not give us the extent of the possibilities with partnerships or the inevitable control over charitable gifts and studio sales to avoid resale at lower prices. The rise of Internet sales and social media is also likely to affect the nature of the exclusivity contracts between artists and
galleries.

For Jonathan, the choice to target a segmented audience is also reflected in his choice of associations. The latest incarnation of this occurred during the Toronto International Film Festival, which is one of Toronto’s most notable events. As a tribute to the festival he created a show of painted works that were based on film stills of classic movies. Movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Wild One, and Rebel Without a Cause to name a few, were all apart of the body of work. Jonathan has also auctioned work for the Canadian Foundation For Aids Research and other charitable events including those for fellow artists.

Jonathan’s positioning in different magazines and appearances on television also reflect his desire to position his art in a more exclusive urban market. Jonathan has been in numerous publications, including Toronto’s Where Magazine, Where Essentials, and ARTnews. He has been interviewed on television stations such as Rogers Cable, and City TV. In 2010, he received an emerging artist award from the Ontario Arts Council.