BO JOSEPH : Exhibitions : Bo Joseph: Feeding the Beast, 2020

Press Release

BO JOSEPH

Feeding The Beast

September 29, 2020 – January 16, 2021

McClain Gallery, Houston

McClain Gallery is pleased to present Feeding the Beast, a solo exhibition by Bo Joseph (b. 1969, California), featuring two parallel bodies of work: works on paper, which layer imagery from Renaissance scenes of battle, mythology and religion, and a new series of wall reliefs depicting composites of divergent historical, religious, and ritual objects that span the globe. This is Joseph’s third solo exhibition at McClain Gallery.

Since his youth, Joseph has been captivated by art from around the world, particularly artwork created for ceremonial use. His initial response to these objects was primarily formalistic, with only peripheral knowledge of their broader and essential cultural meaning. As Joseph became aware of how western civilization systematically colonized the cultures of the people whose land they occupied and whose sacred objects they plundered, he began to see himself, and by extension, the viewer, as a beneficiary of the destruction caused by one culture forcing itself on another. These preoccupations result in a friction between Joseph’s formal interest in objects and all that the act of appropriation encompasses. The referential images summon the encyclopedic stance of large western and colonial institutions and begin to tease out the role artists can play in the reconciliation of history’s fraught legacy. Joseph earnestly grapples with his own engagement with sovereign traditions and asks the viewer to question where their own contributions lie.

Joseph’s new series melds together appropriated imagery referencing Greek and Roman mythology, Renaissance battle scenes, Christian Biblical subjects, and depicts Roman, Germanic, Inuit, and African objects. Of note is a series of wall reliefs in a new technique developed by the artist. These graphic sculptures achieve their rich patina from casein, a medium made with milk protein with 11th-century origins. The wall reliefs explore visual combinations using a pared-back approach, with themes ranging from Jungian archetypes to a 12th-century Sufi poem, or a theatrical gladiatorial helmet seen against a powerful Ekoi figure. Joseph cites Louise Bourgeois and Joseph Beuys as profound influences not only on form and color choices, but also on the use of recontextualization to extract the charge from found sources. Across the show's works, layered scenes of historical imagery give way to energetic vibrations, framing each work in a crystallized tumult. No longer relegated to the image's perimeter, these vibrations appear throughout the composition, breaking his own rules while maintaining his trademark syncretism.

Joseph’s method of abstraction is not overt; rather, it ebbs and flows with energy, pulsing from one sheet of collaged paper to the next and across his signature concentric strokes. Outlines pile on top of and against one another, the specificity of their shapes falling away into sometimes tight and tense fields, sometimes into broad amalgamations of forms that whisper of novel, looming beings. These stacked silhouettes of positive and negative forms straddle the realms of abstraction and figurative art, examining the complexities of human relationships and asking the viewer to reevaluate their own psychic space.

Bo Joseph (b. 1969, California) lives and works in New York City. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992 and has received awards and honors such as the Basil H. Alkazzi Award, and fellowships in painting from Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. He has been a visiting artist/lecturer at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth and the Rhode Island School of Design where he also taught drawing. His work can be found in museums nationally and abroad including Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; and Guilin Art Museum, China. Joseph’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Lee Eugean Gallery in Seoul, South Korea (2017), Sears Peyton Gallery in New York (2016), and McClain Gallery in Houston (2012 and 2015). Joseph’s sculptural work was included in McClain Gallery’s 2018 exhibition re:construction and in their booth at the Dallas Art Fair in 2019.

Please email us at info@mcclaingallery.com or call 713-520-9988 to arrange a viewing of this exhibition. Appointments are available Tuesday - Saturday between 12 pm and 4 pm.

Bo Joseph: Feeding the Beast, 2020

Installation View: "Bo Joseph: Feeding the Beast," McClain Gallery, 2020

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