Jeffrey Morabito

Born in Bronxville, half Hong Kong-ese and half Italian, Jeffrey Morabito spent his early years traveling between New York and Hong Kong. He returned to Asia in 2006, to apprentice with a calligraphy master in Seoul, South. Korea. This allowed Morabito’s painting to be reevaluated into its most basic elements of individual brush strokes. He then spent six years in Beijing, beginning with a Red Gate Gallery Residency, in 2009, teaching at Capital Normal University. Morabito returned to New York in 2016 to pursue an MFA at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, while also founding JMN Artists, a curatorial collective, which has produced three shows in New York. Morabito has exhibited in “Art Beijing;” International Art Fair and Matthius Kupper Gallery, Beijing, China; N-Space and Jay Gallery Seoul, South Korea; Rosenfeld Gallery Philadelphia; Projektraum Knut Osper, Cologne, Germany; and in Eric Firestone Loft, SFA Projects and M.David & Co., New York. In 2019, he had a retrospective of his work entitled “Glossolalia” curated by Karen Wilkin at 1 GAP gallery. Much of Morabito’s work is playing with the legibility of objects in painting. Recognizable figures are put in unrecognizable picture planes, or sometimes the reverse. The associations made by the viewer determine the legibility of the object.