Back to Past Exhibitions >>

Photo installation by Joe Biel

January 13 - March 23, 2007
ArtNight Reception event: Saturday, January 13, 6:00 - 8:30pm
1629 18th Street, Santa Monica

18th Street Arts Center presents Toccata, a new photo-based installation by artist Joe Biel, on exhibit January 13-March 23, 2007 at 18th Street Arts Center, 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica. The reception will be Saturday, January 13, 6;-8:30pm as part of 18th Street’s quarterly Artnight open house event, featuring live music, artist open studios, and more.

Toccata will be comprised of several hundred uniformly-sized small photo images arranged in a single line around the gallery. Subjects will be drawn from the artist’s extensive collection of photo reference material. The result will be a sort of musical line in visual form, with themes, images and motifs coming in and out of play as the viewer moves through the sequence.

Joe Biel (Artist): Though photography is not my primary medium, I have used it increasingly as a source for images, ideas and approaches to making work. The categories and nature in this grouping certainly will echo my concerns as a maker of images. While thinking about making this installation, it occurred to me that a consistent feature of my practice involved putting photographic images through a very personal and subjective filter; subjecting them, in fact, to my own distorted use and recontextualization. It then further occurred to me that it might be of some interest to use the images in and of themselves to create something that reflects their intrinsic nature. Of course I am aware that the selection and arrangement of the photographs reflect the same biases and personal associations as my work in drawing. In fact, I imagine this installation to be a testament to the notion that one cannot escape oneself. It is my hope that the images communicate with a sense of potency to whatever audience will receive them.

Joe Biel is a visual artist working primarily in two-dimensional media. He received an MFA in Painting from the University of Michigan and is currently on the faculty at California State University Fullerton. He has gallery affiliations with Goff and Rosenthal in New York, Greg Kucera in Seattle, and Galerie Kuckei/Kuckei in Berlin. He has been awarded residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE and at the Ballingllen Foundation in Ballycastle, Ireland. In 2003 he was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

18th Street programs are supported by the James Irvine Foundation, California Community Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, National Endowmwnt for the Arts, Santa Monica City Cultural Affairs Division, L.A. County Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Foundation, J. Paul Getty Grant Program, and others.

Top >>