A Wilderness
New work by Joel Werring
11th November to 8th December 2022
Joel Werring is deeply committed to the very act of locating, looking, and ultimately drawing. This is the unshakable core of his practice.
... looking at Joel Werring’s new paintings and drawings... This beautiful series employs a limited palette and strongly emphasizes structure, surface, and mark-making. Werring’s decision to pare down his materials allows us to easily follow his process of juxtaposing visual elements within a single picture until he arrives at formal and narrative connections that are both surprising and sophisticated. These works freely combine images taken from art history with powerful abstract gestures, as well as tender renderings of objects that Joel draws from direct observation.
Matt Phillips, 2022
The work made between 2020 and 2022, following a disrupted sabbatical in Florence, was predominately value-based, with very few traces of colour. Working in this limited palette allowed for fluidity, cohesion, freedom, and expansiveness with scale.
Study after Deer Being Attacked by Dogs, (statue in Casa dei Cervi, Ercolano), 2021
Studio, Redding Connecticut, 2022
After two years of working in black and white, Joel Werring found himself drawn back to colour. "Perhaps this desire is symbolic, or a strong need fueled by growing tired of the pandemic - the way life and communication is necessarily filtered or masked, and our human interaction has limits.... I’m using structural components from my current body of work as a springboard into a new exploration of color dynamics.
Joel Werring, 2022
Black Bowl, 2022
Where drawing, in black and white, feels like an intimate pursuit of knowing and being in dialogue with my painting lineage and the world around me, color for me is more emotional, more internal. Color decisions come from the gut, from feeling, memory, touch, taste, and smell—and they are more demanding on a sensorial level.
Joel Werring, 2022
Gate , 2020
Werring’s art… is fueled by the curiosity, awe, and beautiful confusion that accompanies consciousness. In order to ponder his own questions, Joel looks at the world through the eyes of a painter, an architect, a poet, and a naturalist.
Matt Phillips, 2022
Schoolyard, 2022
After Duccio, 2022
Thus, in this single body of work, we find a simple bird house contending with majestic 15th century Italian architecture, or even a humble fence-like structure crafted of found timber. In one work we see Joel sensitively describing light dancing on the surface of a pond and in another he is deftly harnessing perspective to account for the distance between his window and the city center.
Matt Phillips, 2022
Hymn, 2022
Regardless of the particular subject being described, Werring is deeply committed to the very act of locating, looking, and ultimately drawing. This is the unshakable core of his practice and allows him to constantly archive and examine the significant places, inhabitants, and forms that he experiences throughout his daily life... Joel repurposes these visual elements and ultimately poses entirely new visual structures so that we may examine our human experience anew.
Matt Phillips, 2022
Fallen Tree, 2022
Dwellings (gray ground)
In these drawings and paintings, no single form carries the story, but instead serves as a point within an ever-evolving constellation that becomes more tightly organized and connected with the viewer’s gaze. Joel’s art takes root in the external world and speaks to a vast range of accumulated experiences. And yet, all the while, these pictures reveal a steady and persistent artist in search of knowledge, meaning, and metaphor.
Matt Phillips, 2022
Phantom, 2022
Do Ya, 2022
Wands and Windows, 2022
Third Floor, 2022
Joel Werring received his BA in Art Practice from the University of California at Berkeley and his MFA from the Yale School of Art. He is currently an Associate Professor at Fashion Institute of Technology/State University of New York, where he served as Chair of the Fine Arts Department from 2016 to 2019, and Senior Editor (Image) for Peripheries, a literary and arts journal published annually by Harvard Divinity School. He paints and lives with his family in Redding, Connecticut.
