Joe Fig

Through paintings, sculptures, photographs, and miniature dioramas, Joe Fig explores the intimate lives and production processes of countless acclaimed artists, Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gustav Klimt, Henri Matisse, and Johannes Vermeer being merely a handful. Fig’s subjects appear both in staged re-creations of historically documented moments and in imagined scenarios—while one painting depicts Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin receiving a critique, for example, a photograph of a maquette pictures a life-like diorama of Willem de Kooning at work in his East Hampton studio. These quasi-voyeuristic depictions therefore offer a unique lens through which to consider art production, process, and the myth of artistic genius, as they indeed consistently portray art-historical figures in relatable, ordinary, and private moments. 

Fig has been featured in solo exhibitions at the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, and the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, MoMA PS1 in New York, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, among other institutions.