Mike Weiss Gallery is pleased to present Joe Fleming’s first NY solo show, Suckerpunch. Fleming’s works are re‐mades, where recycling materials and a worn‐out character are pronounced through a visual statement encompassing the entire gallery space in dynamic color, form, and gesture. His relationship with the materials, ranging from enamel to spray foam to insulation, lends itself to the raw energy and materiality of his works. Visceral and edgy, these paintings are like organisms where the evolution of each artwork is at the central core of his oeuvre, with no intention of creating a perfectly finished result. The buildup of textures creates an active quality resonating beyond the paintings physical borders. A sensual relationship with the materials creates a space in which the limits of painting are expanded, resulting in a type of quasi‐painting; an homage to Synthetic Cubism.

In Suckerpunch, Fleming uses a synthesis of multifarious interests and references from Pop Art, cultural iconography, and the inherent connotations of his appropriated materials. With a distinctive and lyrical sensibility, each work links disparate bodily forms, overlapping to create larger anthropomorphic images emerging and receding as the eye travels through the works. Fleming is interested in the ways in which painting relates to its own history, as well as the problems and possibilities that occur within his work. He starts with a panel of industrial polycarbonate, only to alter the surface with scratches allowing for the interplay of light and shadows, reminiscent of film noir. In these paintings, Fleming juxtaposes gestural abstraction with graphic silhouettes of color. The transparency of the polymeric surface combined with the scrawling language over the pristine walls of the gallery intensifies the viewer’s experience, dissolving the threshold of where the painting ends and the wall begins.

Joe Fleming is currently based in Toronto, and has exhibited extensively in Canada and beyond. This is his first show with Mike Weiss Gallery.