Love Song, courtesy Joe Coleman
Exorcism, Alchemy, Mysticism, all of these things exist in my work, but only in the most practical and instinctual sense of a very personal need. Many of these concerns are apparent at the first encounter with one of my paintings. My portraits are dissections of a soul. The paintings are tombs that contain the things that define a life. At the center the fragile bone and flesh and the clothing. Around the center you will find objects important to this life. The homes that held and expressed this life. Important friends and family. Defining events. Dreams. The thoughts and words expressed by and about this being. All presented on the surface with equal importance.
From a distance, the painting has a direct confrontation with the viewer; full of information. If the viewer comes closer more information is revealed. The more one looks the more is revealed. If the viewer uses a magnifying lens or the special lenses I used to paint it, microscopic images are revealed, not just textures but tiny, minute scenes related to the subject.
Some of the detail is buried underneath the painted surface. For example I have spent many hours researching and painting an historical figure's pocket watch and then paint the pocket over it.
This process is enacted without sketching the composition beforehand. I complete a square inch at a time, starting at any point, letting the painting slowly reveal itself to me. I am intensely researching the subject and as information is filtered through me and onto the painting's surface it creates a densely woven narrative pattern. Pattern is the only order I trust. I care only about the detail, the composition is unimportant. It will reveal itself.
Exorcism, Alchemy, Mysticism, all of these things exist in my work, but only in the most practical and instinctual sense of a very personal need.
With magnified lenses used by jewelers and a one-hair brush I submerge into a microscopic world. I build sets, stitch costumes, and act out all of the parts. I become the person I am painting; perhaps like method acting, maybe it's what is called “the assumption of the God form” in occult books. But it is the way in which I can conjure a soul.
A New York Pirate, courtesy Joe Coleman
The painted surface is on a flat piece of wood finely sanded which is glued onto another piece of wood that contains fabric related to the subject or my connection to the subject. When this is attached to the painted frame about 1 to 1½ inches show between the painted frame and the painted wood, giving the effect that the painting is floating within the frame.
In the painting Mommy/Daddy the picture floats on actual clothing my parents wore. A black satin dress of my mother and a USMC (United States Marine Corps) shirt my father wore in Iwo Jima. The two fabrics connect at the very point where I have joined their bisected dependant halves. In the painting A New York Pirate the painting is floating on the actual shirt that Elmo Patrick Sonnier wore to his execution. Love Song, which is a love song in paint to my wife, Whitney Ward, is floating on bed sheet that we fucked on and the four corners of the outer frame contain reliquaries holding co-mingled body parts: a cyst from my neck with Whitney's blood, Whitney's fingernails mixed with my hair, etc....
This treatment of objects as fetish is partially based on my Catholic upbringing but it is an aspect of Catholicism that is heavily rooted in pagan ritual. Objects have magical powers. This belief is so deep within me that I have turned my own home into a shrine of fear, desire and mystery. To possess an object of magic is to possess the object's power. The use of magical objects is vital to my paintings. For A New York Pirate, Sonnier's shirt helps to raise a monster's power and cage it within. In Love Song the objects serve to protect and immortalize our passion for each other. In Mommy/Daddy they serve as physical reminder of my creation and as a warning of the past.
Magical elements in my performances have parallels but it is in the realm of the priest or shaman. In my early teens I was compelled to strap onto my body homemade explosives that were attached to a cookie tin from my mother's kitchen. I wore this device on my chest and then hid it by wearing one of my father's shirts which was slightly too big for me. I would then invade stranger's homes and ignite myself; in the smoke and confusion I would disappear. I eventually turned these primal acts of suburban terror into a stage performance. In 1981 as Professor Momboozoo (a merging of parental forces: Mom=mother, Booze=father) in New York's alternative performance space “The Kitchen,” I delivered an apocalyptic sermon then self-detonated, bit the heads off of live rats and then proceeded to chase out the entire audience from the theater with a double-barreled shotgun. Fire and explosion are elemental forces; the biting off of the head of a live animal is a rite of passage. These acts served to put me into a heightened state of being. Transgression into transcendence into a pre-civilized existence that for me set off an internal psychodrama, releasing deep-seated conflicts of childhood producing a slowly diminishing catharsis until the performances of Professor Momboozoo ended.
I have spent many hours researching and painting an historical figure's pocket watch and then paint the pocket over it.
Mommy/Daddy, courtesy Joe Coleman
With magnified lenses used by jewelers and a one-hair brush I submerge into a microscopic world. I build sets, stitch costumes, and act out all of the parts. I become the person I am painting; perhaps like method acting, maybeit's what is called “the assumption of the God form” in occult books. But it is the way in which I can conjure a soul.
As with the paintings there are many levels produced connecting ancient and modern, pagan and Christian. They also create a cultural echo that returns to me in strange cryptic symbols, like when game show host and animal rights activist Bob Barker spearheaded my arrest for biting the heads off of mice during a performance. When he condemned me in the press this “BARKER” became my sideshow pitchman. Or when the Boston police had me arrested after a performance at the Boston Film and Video Foundation in which I exploded while hanging over the audience. The district attorney charged me (the arrest warrant read “Joe Coleman AKA ‘Dr. Momboozoo’”) with “possession of an infernal machine”—a charge my lawyer said had not been used since the 1800s. The words in the charge imply something diabolical.
As with all of my work I am concerned only with the details, the whole picture will reveal itself to me when it wants...or not. 