There’s something ancient about the way we gather to eat; something theatrical, absurd, and revealing. Roman banquets, velvet cafés, white tablecloth restaurants: across time and place, the dining table has always been a stage for pleasure and performance, a place where class divides are sharpened by silverware and momentarily glossed over with butter and wine. In Jack Penny’s latest body of work, CHEFS, the restaurant–now set in the wilds of the Alps–becomes a site of gluttony, control, and chaos, where the chef, much like the artist, reigns supreme. The series was first shown at Château La Coste back in March, a Provence estate renowned for its art programme, in one of its on-site galleries.
Penny, born in 1988 in Portsmouth and now based in the coastal village of Bosham, West Sussex, is known for his loose, expressive paintings of contemporary life. His figures stumble through late-night bars, black-tie dinners, and private dramas, always on the edge of collapse. In this series, those dynamics converge in the figure of the chef: commanding yet depersonalised, cloaked in crisp whites and culinary authority. “You almost become unaccountable for your actions when you’re in uniform,” Penny later notes. Here, the chef appears to give in to madness, driven to the edge by ritual, repetition and expectation. Though rendered with humour and spontaneity, the series probes deeper systems: the roles we play, the masks we wear, and the instincts we try (and in this case fail) to suppress.
