PLATO

PLATO is excited to present Input/Output, a solo exhibition of oil paintings by Los Angeles–based artist Jacob Rochester, exploring the themes of memory, nostalgia, family, and music’s enduring ability to foster intergenerational connections. The exhibition’s opening is scheduled for January 16. A public reception will be held from 6–8 PM, with the artist in attendance.

 

Drawing from personal history and collective cultural references, Jacob Rochester’s paintings operate as intimate reflections and shared points of recognition—images filtered through time, sound, and lived experience. The artist’s nostalgia is not tied to a single era, but instead emerges as an attachment to objects, music, and people that have left a positive imprint. Renaissance folds and poses coexist with the colors and fashion of Jamaican reggae culture, the 1990s hip-hop aesthetic, and distinct contemporary moments. 

 

Rochester builds his compositions through a combination of sketches, gouache studies, digital manipulation, and eventually an oil painting technique inspired by Titian, in which layers of color are glazed over a monochromatic underpainting. Working primarily from photographic sources—both personal and found (vinyl covers, books, eBay and Facebook marketplace listings, magazine clippings, and posters)—he selects, crops, and alters images much like a music producer isolates and mixes beats or chords. 

 

Music plays a central role throughout the exhibition, serving as a connective force across generations. Speakers, a car radio, instruments, and figures listening to or playing music recur throughout the show, often referring to Rochester’s upbringing. Upfront—a reggae band depicted in Upfront Portrait, which included his father on drums, his uncle on bass, and a close friend of theirs on vocals and guitar—appears as a foundational influence. The warm, textured sound of their practice tapes influenced Rochester’s aesthetic sensibility.

 

Several other paintings draw directly from family artifacts and memories. Nelgin’s Wreath depicts Rochester’s father’s well-worn “One Love” souvenir hat—an object long perched atop a Tascam mixer in the family basement, inseparable from the music that filled the home. Tony & Nelgin features a Polaroid image of Rochester’s uncles jamming at a coffee table, itself covered with a pile of faded Polaroids. The hand-dated photo preserves a suspended moment of kinship through music and shared memories. 

 

Monolith (Fisher) embodies a life-size speaker decorated with a family photograph and a plant that the artist’s mother used to place on top for decades. In Bryan’s Flowers, two men assemble a bouquet during a workshop hosted by a close friend in Los Angeles. These works blur the boundaries between portraiture and still life, emphasizing how objects extend the narrative of the people connected to them. Plants and flowers throughout the show suggest shared blossoming and growth. Meaningful details—keychains, hats, jewelry, creases of a worn leather jacket, folded cuffs, the gleam of a golden ring—act as quiet markers of self-expression, allowing viewers to connect through shared recognition. 

 

The largest painting in the exhibition, The Crew Gazes Back, is a visual monument that celebrates intergenerational and intercultural connections, an ode to the power of creative spirit across time. The artist depicts himself wearing a T-shirt with Olympic rings and leafing through Dancehall, a book of Beth Lesser’s photographs documenting the rise of Jamaican dancehall culture in the mid-to-late 1980s. The two visible pages reveal collective portraits of Jamaican musicians whose inventions have influenced music and style across the globe. A tattoo of Plato, the philosopher, on Rochester’s arm is borrowed from Raphael’s The School of Athens, a fresco picturing a group of ancient thinkers, which also brought the past into the present and honored its ongoing impact.

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Shared history and culture as well as familial love and care can endure through images that continue to echo across generations. Input/Output ultimately presents painting as an act of translation—where memory becomes image, sound reverberates through line and color, and personal history expands into a collective experience.

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Jacob Rochester (b. 1995, Bloomfield, CT) is a multi-disciplinary artist passionate about exploring the evolution of culture at the turn of the 21st-century. His portraits and still lives offer a compelling personal glimpse into the iconography that defines an era of artistic and social innovation in entertainment, fashion, and contemporary visual culture. Referencing collected photographs, magazine clippings, record covers and the like, Rochester merges the past with the present in works that range from photorealistic to gestural in mark making.

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Jacob Rochester lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He earned a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Connecticut in 2016. Some of his solo exhibitions include, ‘Deferred Reality,’ VSG Contemporary, Chicago, IL (2025); ‘Expo Chicago,’ solo presentation with Residency Art Gallery, Chicago, IL (2024); ‘Under Pressure,’ Franchise Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023); and ‘Paperworks,’ Swish Gallery, San Diego, CA (2021). Rochester has participated in numerous group exhibitions internationally, including; ‘Exaltation,’ PLATO, New York (2025); ‘Men in the Off Hours,’ Central Server Works, Los Angeles, CA (2025); ‘The Garage,’ Toxic Arts Gallery, London, England (2025); ‘Two Thousand and Two,’ Anthony Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2025); ‘Rendezvous,’ Good Mother Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2024); ‘Cruising,’ Alabaster Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2024); ‘Feast Your Eyes,’ VSG Contemporary, Chicago, IL (2024); ‘Amor Tuyo,’ Tlaloc Studios, Los Angeles, CA (2024); ‘Time of Our Lives,’ Anthony Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2024); ‘Love Letters to LA,’ Hypeart, Los Angeles, CA (2024); ‘Fracture to Flourish,’ VSG Contemporary, Chicago, IL (2024); ‘Sole Perspectives,’ Nike, Miami, FL (2023); ‘Art Paris Fair,’ Galerie Marguo, Paris, France (2023); ‘Surface Area Gallery,’ Surface Magazine, Miami, FL (2023); ‘Juntos,’ Tlaloc Studios, Los Angeles, CA (2022); ‘Shattered Glass,’ Jeffrey Deitch, Miami, FL (2021); and ‘Unite Through Culture,’ Anthony Gallery, Chicago, IL (2019).

 

Rochester has collaborated as an illustrator with such companies and music artists as Apple, Aime Leon Dore, Citizen, Converse, Fear of God, Kendrick Lamar, NBA, Nike, New Balance, Playboy, Sabrina Carpenter, Spotify, Stone Island, Street Dreams, Supreme NY, and Tupac Estate, among many others.