Sears-Peyton
Gallery presents A Persistent Absence, an exhibition of new work
by Bo Joseph, February 11-March 13, 2010. Included in the installation
will be paintings and large scale drawings, as well as Joseph’s newest
series A Lexicon of Persistent Absence, created during his recent
three month stay in Berlin, Germany.
Within Berlin’s famously cyclical layering of destruction and
reinvention, Joseph found the “absences” to be persistently and
inexorably woven with everything physically “present,” a condition of
inversion that mirrors many aspects of his working process. The symbols
of people, places and ideas that no longer exist, in which societies
invest meaning—whether carved ancestor figures in an extinct African
culture, or paving stones set in streets across Berlin where the Wall
once stood—provide visual references for Joseph. From myriad printed
sources he scavenges imagery of objects that transcend cultural
boundaries and superimposes them in dense webs of line or as negative
shapes over gestural fields of color. Objects appear as voids; spaces
appear as form. Through chancy techniques, Joseph develops complex
referential hybrids that invoke the anomalous and transient nature of
material meaning and instigate new roles for his archetypal sources.
Whether working on a fragmentary used drop cloth or on joined sheets of
paper, he exploits the painting support like yet another intrinsically
charged found object. The resulting abstractions examine how beliefs and
perception affect the experience of “reality” and the compiling of
collective knowledge; and despite their wide-ranging and often disparate
sources, these works assert signs of ideological syncretism and
contemporary interdependence.
Bo Joseph (b.1969), a native of California, has exhibited in solo
and group exhibitions with galleries and institutions across the U.S.
Joseph 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 has also taught drawing.
His work is held in international public collections including the
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; The Springfield
Museum of Art, Springfield, OH; and the Guilin Art Museum, Guilin,
China. He received a B.F.A. in painting from the Rhode Island School of
Design. Joseph lives and works in New York City.
Sears-Peyton Gallery
210 11th Avenue, Suite 802
New York, NY 10001
T. 212.966.7469
F. 917.305.1910
E. info@searspeyton.com
Web: www.searspeyton.com
Hours: Tues - Fri 10-6, Sat 11-6