King of the town James Jean gets ready for his big takeover in NYC...

It's been a while since a truly visionary young talent made his impact on the art world known in a virtuosic and explosive debut exhibition, but that's exactly what California painter JAMES JEAN has done in his new show "Kindling" at NYC's JONATHAN LEVINE GALLERY that opened last weekend. A renowned commercial, graphic, and comic book artist for years, Jean finally committed himself to pursuing a fine art career full-time in 2008, the result of which is a jaw-droppingly gorgeous body of sophisticated visions highly influenced by classical Chinese and Japanese aesthetics the likes of which many established artists could only imagine creating at their peak. Like a young Mark Ryden—an obvious spiritual and aesthetic forebear to Jean—who forever eschewed his lucrative career in commercial art in the early 1990s in pursuit of fine art glory, 30-year-old Jean has all the raw chops, vision, and technical prowess to officially assume the mantle of the bona fide "Next Big Thing." Undoubtedly, intuitive collectors who weren't laid bare by recent economic catastrophes and got their hands on a masterpiece from this show will be retiring on the profits made when these works change hands at astronomical prices in years to come. Keep an eye out for our upcoming interview with Jean in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, HAVE A LOOK:

Opening photos by Jay Sacher...