Joe Post

Solo One

Solo One, Mixed Media, Dimensions Variable, 2011.

Solo One, Installation View, No Participant.

An installation model (sketchup).

On Pooh and Pooh-ness

Winnie-the-Pooh, Oil on Canvas, 2011.

Winnie The Pooh, Oil on Canvas, 2011.

Pooh Tries To Write His Name But Makes A Picture, Oil on Canvas, 2011.

Icon Dissolve, Oil on Canvas, 2011.

Birth Certificate, Oil on Canvas, 2011.

Abstract Pooh, Oil on Canvas Paper, 2011.

About

My experiences living in Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, England, Kenya, America, and Spain inform my life and my art. One experience that haunts me is a tenth grade class trip to the Lake Victoria area of Kenya. We left the comforts of our expatriate life in Nairobi and were taken to the Luo People at the edge of the lake. For one week we were paraded around the village and were exposed to unimaginable poverty, which could not be ignored. Villagers guided us to their homes and school, crimson dung and mud huts with dark, dank, interiors, with no chairs or tables. Dozens of children sat quietly on the moist red soil. A palpable feeling of impotence washed over me as we stood there. A tourist without nails, hammers, or wood, I could do little more than reflect on the absurdity of my presence there. A village ‘mze’ explained, “Your duty is not to build chairs and tables—Your duty is take what you have seen here and share it with others.”

In my work I strive to balance the tensions between popular images and the ambiguity of their interpretations. For example, a riot may also look like a sporting event. An image of water being dropped on wildfires in California may also look like the dispersal of Agent Orange over the jungle in Vietnam. The tensions that are underscored in making these ambiguities visible subvert any single understanding of events and may even foster a confrontation with the uncertainties of the reality I am depicting. For example, in Good Hunting Blue Sky, I picture a group of approaching helicopters but I try to represent them not only as an image of violence but also of apathy. By neutralizing the original background of the image I re-contextualize it and in doing so I ask the viewer to reexamine the image, to take note of its ambiguities and perhaps even its ambivalence. Rendered in black poured latex paint on canvas, the image of the helicopters is diminished to the level of sign of itself, exuding a sense of it as an “idea” rather than as only a portent of immediate threat.I believe the mze was right, that it is my duty to share what I have seen.

Do you want to know more about my developing ideas? Send me an email.

Blog