Jeffrey Isaac Biography
Jeffrey Isaac was born in New York in 1965. He spent his childhood in Switzerland before returning to the United States to study painting at the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA 1977) and the Camberwell School of Art in London. It was recommended by Frank Bowling. In 1977 he moved to New York where he began working in publishing, performance art and curating. In 1979 he created and co-managed the Avant-Garde-Arama performance series at Performance Space 122 under the pseudonym Eddie Grand along with Barbara Ess, Judith Wong and Al Arthur. The art-rock band "Listen to the Animal" performed at venues such as CBGB, the Mudd Club and the Public Theater. In 1986 he moved to Umbria, near Spoleto, and became friends with numerous local artists, including Sol LeWitt, Carol and Michael Venezia, Afranio Metelli, Robin Heidi Kennedy, Marco Tirelli, Myriam Laplante, Franco Troiani, Emanuele de Donno and Nyla van Ingen. In 1993 he held a personal exhibition at the Marilena Bonomo Gallery in Bari entitled '93 Olives', while in 1994 he exhibited at the Salvatore Ala Gallery in Soho, New York with the personal exhibition 'Subway to Italy'. Isaac has exhibited in numerous venues in the United States and Europe and his work ranges across different media, from digital art to oil on canvas. His installations, which often integrate sound and performance, are particularly known for their use of panoramas and dioramic booths. At the 1990 Spoleto Festival in Italy, he presented a 350° walk-in panorama of the Umbrian village of Bazzano Superiore, subsequently shown in Rome and Bari and currently held in the LeWitt Collection, Chester, CT, USA. Its installation took place in the geodesic dome of Spoleto, known as the Spoletosphere, designed by Buckminster Fuller. In 2016 he created a major installation entitled "Earthly Delights" composed of large-scale cut-out paintings, suspended in a repurposed church, with a simultaneous performance by Nyla van Ingen, Myriam Laplante, Daniela Malusardi and Dan Kinzelman. The exhibition "Manifest Destinies" (2009) hosted at Cà Zanardi in Venice, was part of an ambitious series of multi-site collateral exhibitions of the 53rd Venice Biennale "Detournement Venise 2009" in a 2-story former biscuit factory. It included monumental historical paintings such as "Flotilla of Fools" depicting all 196 heads of state, wearing fool's hats, posing on shipwrecks.
