Self-portrait as a country club legend, 2024

Jake Troyli (Boston, 1990) investigates otherness and the commodification of the Black/Brown body, confronting and exploring spectacle and sweat equity as a demonstration of value in his work. He explores performance, power, and the construction of identity through energetic paintings, often featuring a self-portrait or avatar of himself embedded in engaging scenes, with a markedly classicist approach. His works act as a trojan horse, with an attractive surface belying more complicated content underneath. 

Troyli expands the functionality and influence of his figures, imbuing them with new agency and establishing absurd narratives to consider the timeless conversations surrounding the preconceived notions of identity and value structures. Self-portrait as country club legend features his signature self-portrait while referencing Troyli’s own experience with sports. Notably, the artist played D1 basketball in college, which led to him developing a critical and complicated view of the dynamic between audience and athlete or performer, and what it means to be on display. This work depicts a tennis player, widely considered more of an upper-class sport, and Troyli has removed his tattoos and is playing dress up, exploring what it means to be a token, conflating race and class expectations through a single moment, arms raised holding his racquet. 

Troyli was deeply influenced by MAD magazine, political cartoons, and comic books as an accessible vehicle to help him build a visual language as he didn’t have access to contemporary art growing up. By appropriating motifs from both the classical and the comic, his work exists in a space that he hopes defies and subverts immediate assumption by utilizing self-conscious self-imagery and familiar language to navigate tense conversations between artist and viewer. His approach with techniques formalized during the High Renaissance, underpainting and toning are central to the conception of each work as a contrast to his interest in the use of satire and “low-brow” image-making, as well as a humorous delivery of information, to engage an audience in a way that feels accessible.

Troyli received his BA from Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, TN (2013), his MFA from the University of South Florida, Tampa (2019), and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME (2019).  He has exhibited at moniquemeloche gallery, Chicago, IL, (2020, 2022); The Milwaukee Museum, Milwaukee, WI, (2023); The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS (2023); Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, (2022); The Ringling Museum, Sarasota, FL (2021); Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL (2019). His work is in the permanent collection of The Tampa Art Museum, Tampa, FL; The Ringling Museum, Sarasota, FL; The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; and Pierce and Hill Harper Arts Foundation, Detroit, MI. Raised in Florida, Jake is now based in Newark.