This is Jaybo Monk
For me, what make up a great artist are the things that he have experienced. For it is within these experiences that he draws inspirations from and develops attitudes for his process. Jaybo Monk was a runaway when he was a kid… he was a street urchin. He has been a street actor, a graffiti writer and a hiphop musician. For more than 2 decades he has evolved into a visual-artist, whose brilliant artworks have been exhibited around the world.
There is always a special place in my acrylic drenched heart for visual artists who had their beginnings rooted in the rawness of the streets. Theirs are romantic stories of success using sheer talent to transcend from the gutters. THIS IS JAYBO MONK.
Interview by Crist Espiritu.
Artworks by Jaybo Monk.
Why did you choose to use the name Jaybo Monk? What does this name mean?
Nothing particular, those are the phonetic version of my real name beginning with “jay” and a “b”. It came first when I was doing music, I was known as “JBO Monkey”. Later I thought I was getting too old for that and I change the “monkey” to the “monk”. After a while I read about a legend wherein a monk of the same name was asked to bring the words of Buddha from India to China and needed the help of the king of the monkeys. I thought that it matched me in my quest of lost causes.
How were you introduced into graffiti?
Back in the Eighties, I was a runaway kid. Living in the streets first in the South of France and later in Paris. Graffiti was always around in its original form, kids were scratching the surface of the walls, writing their beloved girlfriends or dissing the teacher or the government. Revolution start always by something written on a wall. I was always trying to draw the most I could and I started suing stencils a bit. Cutting out record covers from the time and giving names related to my social position. Eat The Rich. etc. Later the wave of graffiti went over to Europe and I understood the quality of words on trains and the violence of giving your name such a presence only to be noticed by the ignorants. That was what let me go with the cans.
Your fascination with the human body is very obvious in your works. Why are human anatomies rendered so violently? Almost as if the subjects are in pain. (or maybe this is just my personal interpretation)
Pain is a way to make you feel that you exist. I consider myself as an emotional painter, instance and natural behaviors like rage and love, starvation…screaming… all those feelings are in everyone of us. The fact that I am using deconstructed forms of bodies is a result of those emotions locked in my memories and connected or being awaken by photos or situations I see during my journey. I paint without thinking. I will paint love with exactly the same fever as pain. I am trying to get my feelings inside out.
“I paint without thinking. I will paint love with exactly the same fever as pain. I am trying to get my feelings inside out.”
You ran away from home when you were still very young, and have ever since been described as a “wanderer”. Is this reflected in your art?
I guess yes! I am an explorer of my behavior and others. I quit school at a very young age and I learned to learn by making mistakes and to provoke accidental reactions. I paint exactly with the same technique… always in movement, never staying still… as the process is, for me, the joy of painting. I love to increase my skills and try new techniques. I try to hold all universal style of painting in my mind.
Does being a graffiti writer and a street actor influence your painting process?
Definitely. Everything influence my process, I need the graffiti for the spray techniques, the scales and the need to be noticed. I need the actor’s skills to understand behaviors, but I also need a bad hair day, a pleasant sunset, the smile of a knife, the pain of an impossible love — I need them all.
I find your deconstructions of Eugene Delacroix’s The Barque of Dante very interesting. What’s the concept behind it? Why did you choose to deconstruct that piece?
It is a part of a series I am doing related to the old masters, a work around compositions and myths. Dante´s Barque is quite an accurate theme for the humanity’s situation. I feel like we are bit of some Boat of people without anyone driving the wheel. “The Divine Comedy” who start to show that anything academic threw us in a decadence of not being able to make decisions, but to follow rules given by one system.
Most of your artworks are made of several layers swirling with images both familiar and foreign. Where do you get these images from? How do you decide which ones to include in a certain piece? Are you precise in your process or do you have a sort of “automatist” approach?
Nice to hear that word. I think I have an automatic approach to it. I don’t really know and I actually never asked myself this question. I have a very long period of time before I actually paint thinking days and night and going into my brain for memories and flash back. The kick comes with a picture I see in the news or in the net which provoke a chain reaction of decisions. I follow my instincts and this is all the fun that I don’t know where I am going.
I saw previews of “Silent Listen”, your latest exhibition in LA, and the images were all in black and white. This is distinctly different from your other series that are composed of strong colors. What is the reason for this? What’s the concept behind this show?
Well the previews are kept black and white for the audience so as to not reveal too much before the show. It is actually much more colored than you think even if I chose a lot of grey. This is my first time in the US and I was confronted with my memories of the visuals’ effect it had on me. First thing I saw on TV was the landing on the moon, after the that I was a USA addict, it changed with the years. But I was surprised by how deep those pictures where claiming my memories. I worked a lot with all the film optic of the 30’s until the 60’es. Black and white, typical way of making the photos of that time, The Chandlers, The Orson Wells, The first women icons, etc. That’s what came out of it.
“Pain is a way to make you feel that you exist. I consider myself as an emotional painter, instance and natural behaviors like rage and love, starvation…screaming… all those feelings are in everyone of us. The fact that I am using deconstructed forms of bodies is a result of those emotions…”
What does the future hold for Jaybob Monk? Any upcoming projects you’d like to share with our readers?
I will do a show in Berlin and in London this year. I am trying to evolve in some new dimensions. I will try to increase my blog. I Wish U sun.
Do you have any advice for upcoming artists?
Act without expectations and provoke accidents.
Thank you very much for granting us this interview. Lastly, what do you think of DOZE?
I think it is important for anyone to tell his thoughts because only by saying what you have seen you can understand it. In my particularly case, it was a chance to talk to you at DOZE, for making things clear in my own head — Thank you for that. DOZE should grow.
Follow Jaybo Monk on Instagram @jaybomonk
Follow Crist Espiritu on Twitter and Instagram @crist_espiritu
“Silent Listen”
SOZE Gallery
652 Mateo Street, #107
Los Angeles, CA 90021
Opening Reception on February 28, 2011 / 6-9PM