reviews JOE COLEMAN
Joe Coleman: internal Digging
KW INstItutE fOr CONtEM pOr Ary Art, BErLIN
27 M Ay – 12 August
A Picture from Life’s
Other Side
(Hank Williams), 1998,
acrylic on panel,
86 x 104 cm.
Collection Anna sea
and Craig rodriguez
Murderers, psychopaths, singers and artists; the
characters that populate Joe Coleman’s paintings
constitute a very peculiar section of human society.
His interest and focus are the curiosities of life, the
nonconformist oddities and perverse aberrations
of human behaviour.
Susanne Pfeffer’s choice for her first show
as Kunst-Werke’s resident curator is courageous.
The American Coleman is little known and, in
his early fifties, not one of the young and trendy,
positioned instead on the far side of the current
artistic mainstream. His paintings’ graphic style
and their ornate precision place them somewhere
between illustration and folk art, often bordering
on the realm of kitsch. However, by taking the
artist and his own obsessions into account, and
demonstrating his collecting and researching
through the ‘Odditorium’ in the central gallery
space, the exhibition becomes a fascinating
panorama of our society and its popular interests,
referencing and updating historic Wunderkammern
and freakshows.
In the ‘Odditorium’, an ongoing museum-like installation, Coleman presents a part of his own collection of waxworks and taxidermy specimens,
historic documents, autographs and photographic images. They are displayed in and between three old circus trailers, as if it were all a travelling sideshow
presented for the delectation and thrill of its audience before the actual performance. There’s a wax reliquary of Saint Agnes (with real relics) next to
dramatic scenes of murder and rape. Inside one of the trailers we find the manufactured remains of Fiji mermaids, creatures half-mammal and half-fish,
together with a letter to Coleman from the mass murderer John Wayne Gacy and a photo of rockabilly legend Hasil Adkins, a close friend, mounted in a
frame along with dirt from his grave. All of these objects come directly out of Coleman’s flat, where he keeps them in similarly theatrical installations.
In his paintings, the stories around these figures are expanded and explored. He tells their life stories through multiple layers of parallel narratives
and explanatory text. As in medieval paintings, narrative digressions are added by way of smaller images that explore the central theme. Thus to the
stories of serial killer Ed Gein (Portrait of Ed Gein, 1996), Hasil Adkins (The Lone One, Hasil Adkins, 1995), freakshow performer Johnny Eck (Behold Eck,
2006) and motorcycle act Indian Larry (Indian Larry’s Wild Ride, 2005) Coleman adds images of his subjects’ relatives, friends, influences and defining
situations. These paintings are detailed pictorial novels, telling the lives of society’s outcasts, and their at-times morbid and gruesome depictions are an
exploration of the audience’s voyeuristic fascination with murder and perversion as a substitute reaction. Axel Lapp
133 Artreview
NEW Sept_REVIEWS.indd 19 7/8/07 15:56:49
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