Artospective: Paintings by Joshua Dean.

Be Young Have Fun (An Exposition from jpeg), 2017, Acrylic on Canvas, 47 x 71 inches.

An Interview with Joshua Dean.

Who and where are you from and How you got into this?

Hailing from a conservative, Midwestern town, I learned the skill of escapism early. The pursuit led me to the world of comic books, initially copying the drawings of superheroes. From this I developed an interest in the figure and its place in the history of art. I googled figurative schools and found the New York Academy of Art, a graduate school started by Andy Warhol in the 1980s. It’s committed to the tradition and technique of the Master painters.

What is your driving force?

I’m interested in seeing the mundane in novel ways. I like using images that pass in the moment and are quickly forgotten. I utilize the camera for this. It is a device that steals fleeting moments and preserves them before they can be absorbed like a drop in a river. From there I edit the image in order to realize new and significant meanings that are lost.

What kind of work you do and why?

Drawing from Pop Art influences, I developed an appreciation for social commentary. Seeing the significance of both traditional and postmodern painting, I devised a plan to join the two. I learned to become printer. Interpreting the painting digitally, I reappropriate traditional techniques by deconstructing familiarity and meaning to better understand new and different usages. I use only four colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. In this scheme, the black layer stands in for the grisaille. I layer the other colors in an additive process. The painting develops left to right, mimicking the oscillated output of an ink jet printer.

Tell us more about your thought process.

In order to understand a thing’s relevance, we need its adverse or adjacent-other to compare it to. By referencing the past while pointing to current trends of thinking and reason, I create a particular frequency within the work. I intend that this oscillation be a liberation from ideological naivety or cynicism. My paintings reside in this flux in order to understand how the photo can function as cultural memory.

Please share with us the one modern artist whose work you find Interesting and why?

I have been a fan of Neo Rauch since I first saw his show Neo Rauch at the Met: para. I love his iconic use of the figure. His bold and often over-saturated palette is complimented by his adroit painting technique. You can easily sit and enjoy a passage of color that has no basis on the composition within the whole image.