Tony Just
Untitled

Tony Just (b. 1969, USA) is a Berlin-based artist who paints in books, on paper, canvas and walls. He draws upon Reiki and I Ching practices, methods he used for his own healing before bringing them to his work. His practice is informed by the question of how to make an image sacred. This image comes from a drawing of a flattened inner section of a matchbox that Just found on the street in Berlin. Attracted to its color and interested in its cross-like shape, Just transforms the image by creating it again with his own hands. As a queer man who has experienced the traumatic effects of organized religion, such a transformation is at once art-making, healing and his own form of prayer. Just received his MFA in Painting at Hunter College, New York, and BFA in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited in New York at MoMA PS1, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, White Columns and Karma, and in Berlin at Arratia Beer and PSM. This work is offered as an extension of his recent exhibition Our Inchoate Love at Efremidis, Berlin.