Jet Le Parti
Jet Le Parti (born Jerrette Lee II; July 9 1998, Columbus, Georgia) is an American artist, musician, poet, and writer. He is the founder of the gallery and label initiative Base 36 in Brooklyn, New York, and Sibyl, a private collection and advisory based in Los Angeles. In 2025, he was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list in the Art & Culture category.
Early life and education
Le Parti was born in Columbus, Georgia, and grew up on Fort Benning, a large U.S. Army installation near the city. He played baseball as a teenager, was named a Preseason All-American by the scouting organization Perfect Game USA, and entered the University of Pennsylvania as a recruited athlete. He played one season at Penn before leaving the sport to study philosophy and cognitive neuroscience. He later attended the Royal College of Art but did not complete a degree.
His academic background and interest in phenomenology, critical theory, and physics have informed his multidisciplinary approach, combining conceptual frameworks with sensory experimentation.
While living in Philadelphia he took part in underground music events in the Strawberry Mansion and Kensington neighborhoods. He has since lived in Los Angeles and New York, and later divided his time between Berlin and London.
Visual art
Le Parti is self-taught. His paintings use house paint, graphite, ink, aerosol, oil, and wax. His subjects have included mortality, systemic violence, cultural saturation, and observation, and his output is organized into bodies of work. The Melting Blues series consists of paintings in muted blue and grey palettes. Reign.925, produced with the artist L.S. Toy, combines graffiti, stencil, silkscreen, plaster, acrylic transfers, and photography with painting. Individual works include To Be Hung (2022), Trojan (2023), Window, Face in Cave, Portrait of a YN (2026), 2 Avant Garde Noise Listeners (2026), and Revenant / Walker in the District (2026). Earlier paintings, including History of the World, Pandora/Prometheus, and On Phenomenology, are held at Sibyl in Los Angeles.
Exhibitions
- Onset of the Relativistic, Base 36, Brooklyn (2022)
- Veiled Constructions: Dark Perceptions of the Human Experience, Sotheby's Institute of Art, New York (2023)
- Postscript: Field Notes, New York (2023)
- Surface to Air, Base 36, Brooklyn (2024)
- Lost in Translation: Echoes, Mythos, & Ecce Hommo, Sibyl, Los Angeles (2024)
- Termination Notice, RP.1, Brooklyn (2025)
- American Wasteland, RP.1, Brooklyn (2026)
Art market
Le Parti does not have gallery representation and has declined sales, collaborations, and formal showings; his work has traded on the secondary market. He has been cited as an example of the "grey chip" segment of the art market, a category discussed alongside blue-chip and "red chip" artists.
To Be Hung (c. 2021-2022) was offered at Sotheby's Contemporary Discoveries sale in New York on October 3, 2023, where bidding reached $420,000 before the work was withdrawn. His retained works are held in freeport storage, including the Geneva Freeport and facilities in Luxembourg, Singapore, Delaware, and Newark.
Music
Le Parti produces experimental sound and electronic music under his own name. His works combine ambient, drone, minimal techno, and spoken word elements, and has performed as a DJ in warehouse and club settings.
His 2026 album Listening Post was released through RP.1, the label and gallery division of Base 36. Reviewers have compared the album to the work of Scanner, William Basinski, and Tim Hecker, alongside Japanese electronic musicians Shinichi Atobe, Takaaki Itoh, Wata Igarashi, Merzbow, and Susumu Yokota.
Discography
- Overture: 1 (EP) (2024)
- Surface to Air (2024)
- Exit (EP) (2025)
- Brooklyn Queens Express (EP) (2025)
- Listening Post (2026)
- Mind-Body Problem (2026)
Poetry
Le Parti's poetry focuses on the existential and philosophical themes that are also present in his visual art. Le Parti published a poetry collection, every day is a countdown, published under the name J.L. Parti through Base 36. It includes the poems Skin, Weekend, Teeth, and Countdown, and the longer poems Fruits of the Loom I and II, Bits & Pieces, Airport Orders, and Ramble.
Writing
He has also written essays on culture and philosophy, including Errors & Residuals (2021) and Residuum: On the Phenomenology of Saturation and the Aesthetics of Afterwards (2025), which argues that contemporary culture is defined by media saturation rather than by questions of authenticity. In Hide & Seek: Theory & Action (2026), he introduced the concept of "exaptism", adapted from the evolutionary biology of Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba, which proposes redirecting existing information infrastructures rather than seizing or destroying them. A 2026 essay, Sign & Substrate, argues that consciousness is an abstraction over a physical substrate, drawing on Douglas Hofstadter, Jacques Derrida, and Theodor Adorno.
Base 36
Base 36 is an independent cultural and artistic collective founded by Le Parti in 2020 in Bushwick, Brooklyn. It functions as a platform for interdisciplinary research, production, and exhibition, integrating visual arts, music, and cultural theory. The name “Base 36” is inspired by the numerical system of the same name and symbolizes the idea of compressing information into a manageable form. The Whitehot Magazine describes Base 36 as an “ambitious creative platform” that operates outside the logic of traditional commercial galleries.
The organization produces and exhibits visual art, music, and writing, and includes RP.1, a gallery and record label, and Converting Culture, an editorial publication for which Le Parti is editor-in-chief and 121.radio, a streaming platform with city-specific programming. In 2021, a police raid on a Brooklyn venue led to equipment confiscation and a temporary suspension of operations, after which the organization changed its approach to venues and programming.
Recognition
Le Parti was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list in the Art & Culture category in 2025.
External links
- Base36
- Jet Le Parti at Resident Advisor