Joe Fleming
Joe Fleming's artistic oeuvre is a response to the pervasive influence of Hollywood and media on contemporary culture. His paintings are a thought-provoking amalgam of abstracted animated imagery, which engage with notions of identity, mass production, political upheaval, and transformation in a world where possibilities are infinite.
Fleming's creative process involves a unique approach of collaging and photographing animated imagery, which is then enlarged and engraved into polycarbonate. Fleming's mark-making practice incorporates both hand and machine techniques, resulting in a captivating play between figure and ground in a modernist idiom. The final painting is semi-transparent allowing light to permeate through the surface and cast shadows on the wall. Fleming works in diverse media such as painting, video, and digital art. and offers a commentary on contemporary culture and its intersections with mass media and technology.
Joe Fleming’s career is marked by numerous solo exhibitions internationally in galleries and institutions in major cities, including Singapore, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and New York City. Fleming has lectured at universities in Canada, the United States, and South East Asia since 1993. His paintings are included in numerous public and private collections, such as BMO Financial Group, Trimark Mutual Funds, Honeywell Bull, Prince Waterhouse Coopers (Malaysia), HSBC Bank, A.T. Tolley Collection, Australian High Commission, Canadian High Commission (Kuala Lumpur), the Art Gallery of Edmonton, the Museum of Civilization (Hull, Quebec), and the Holocaust Museum (LA).
Fleming has participated in several international art fairs, including Art Stage (Singapore), FIAC (Paris), Arte Cologne (Germany), Scope (New York and Miami), Papier (Montreal), and TIAF (Toronto). His work has been featured in a variety of publications, such as Carte Blanche 2: Painting - a survey of new Canadian painting (The Magenta Foundation), 60 Painters in Canada, The Artist's Studio (by Joseph Hartman), American Illustration, Imago Mundi, Design Lines Magazine, Azure Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Now Magazine, CBC, Chelsea Now, and The Wall Street Journal Magazine.
Joe Fleming, Burgers to Birkins, 2024 at General Hardware, Toronto
Joe Fleming, Six-Foot Burger, 2024, enamel on polycarbonate, semitransparent, with collage and aluminum frame, 66 x 48 inches
Joe Fleming, Roley, 2024, enamel on polycarbonate with aluminum frame, semitransparent, 24 x 30 inches
Joe Fleming, Cone 2024, enamel and collage on polycarbonate, semitransparent, with aluminum frame, 48 x 36 inches
Joe Fleming, Meat Birkin, 2024, enamel on polycarbonate with aluminum substrate, 24” x 24”
Joe Fleming, Untitled, 2023, enamel on polycarbonate with silver engraving, 40 x 68 inches
Joe Fleming, Glamping, 36 x 28 inches, enamel on polycarbonate
Joe Fleming, Two Taps, 27 x 35 inches, enamel on polycarbonate
Joe Fleming, Micah’s Melody, enamel on polycarbonate, semi-transparent, 48” x 38”
Exhibition: Silver Harley, June 8 - July 18, 2019
ARTORONTO.CA by Mikael Sandblom
Fugitive Pigment by Earl Miller
The Escape Club, exhibition review Artoronto
Reviews of Suckerpunch, solo exhibition @ Mike Weiss Gallery NYC, 2014:
Wall Street International Magazine Review
interview with Studio Beat
Excerpt from exhibition text “The Escape Club” by Graham Gillmore, Nov. 2017
“But it is paintings’ potential, as well as it’s exhausted past that makes these images resonate, giving them their bloodline, as they coerce history into fantasy. If the shock of the new has been demoted to modernity, Fleming’s paintings strive for irreverent sophistication without tagging the Mona Lisa with a moustache.”
R.M. Vaughan June 23, 2012
“Fleming uses construction scraps and found objects to create short but very thick pile-ups that leap off the wall. Then he slathers his hoardings with gobs and bucket wallops of candy bright paint. Weirdly, this messy sounding scheme results in works that betray a ruined elegance, the allure of the dishevelled (what is known in club culture as being a “hot mess”) – all of which makes me suspect that despite the outward slap-dash action, Fleming is a highly calculating painter.”
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