Jon Pestoni’s (b. 1969, St. Helena, California) paintings are proposals, formal experiments in which competing, even contradictory, aesthetic positions co-exist, often within the same work. They are documents of an ongoing process of self-examination, cancellation, and improvisation in which the desired result is not only visual surprise but also the continual rediscovery of how art feels in real time, on a moment-to-moment basis.

ccordingly, Pestoni considers a painting successfully resolved when it undoes what was originally expected of it. The moods conjured from painting to painting therefore vary widely, and sometimes even contradict one another. Pestoni’s work is borne of the notion that the fullest range of emotional and inte...