Joseph Hart’s work is an amalgamation of premeditated and spontaneous mark making, instinct and restraint, effort and error. Utilizing drawing, painting and cut-paper collage, his work is structured around cursory gestures: errant dashes, quick lines, scrawls, swoops and zigzags. This set of preliminary and exploratory maneuvers are then built upon, reconfigured or impulsively edited out until a composition begins to emerge. In his paper pieces, smaller scale drawings are often grafted directly into larger works, interrupting the initial picture plane while also reactivating it. The results are abrupt yet manage to achieve a bizarre and unexpected elegance.

 

Adaptation and balance play critical roles in Hart’s practice. Direction and orientation (vertical, horizontal, or other) typically remain in flux throughout his process, facilitating discovery through attempt. Moments of aesthetic beauty are evened by calculated blemish and visual apathy. Areas of careful consideration and casual awkwardness are forced to co-exist. Through this democratization of components and ideas, Hart emphasizes the relationships between turmoil, tension and harmony. 

 

Joseph Hart, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and a 2014 Dieu Donné Workspace Residency Fellow. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Halsey McKay Gallery, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, David Krut Projects and The Bronx Museum of Art in New York, Galerie Vidal Saint-Phalle in Paris, Galleri Tom Christofferson in Denmark, and the Frans Masareel Center in Belgium, amongst others. His work is featured in the public collections at The Davis Museum at Wellesley College, RISD Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

 

 

Note that additional shipping charges will be required if item is not picked up at Greene Hill School.