Head in Hands

2007 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

11 x 8.5 inches

Joe Biel

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Head in Hands by Joe Biel is part of a larger series of drawings made in connection with the book of short stories Navigating Ghosts by Annie Buckley. Biel’s small-scale black and white drawing features a torso holding their own head in their hands, though the expression on the bodiless face maintains a serene sensibility. The edges of the drawing around the figure’s neck and torso are softened so that the figure appears ghostly, as if the character is an illusion or dream. Head in Hands uses concrete objects to describe the dream-like layers of feeling and psychological outlooks discussed in the book. The stories in Buckley’s book are largely about identity and memory, therefore Biel was more interested in responding to the internal, psychological states that Buckley conjures, rather than depicting specific narratives or actions that play out in her stories. This way of working is closely related to Biel’s broader practice, which is more interested in the metaphoric than the literal.

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Working primarily in drawing, Joe Biel is interested in charged human situations. This interest is reflected through various means; sometimes by portraying a particular moment or event, but more often by showing the moment before or after an action which is only partially named or specified. The artist is more interested in the suggestion of narrative possibilities than in clearly resolved linear narratives. There is a constant oscillation between the imagined and the observed in Biel’s work. Often these are combined and result in a fusion of differing qualities: stoicism and vulnerability, absurd comedy and overwrought tragedy, the banal and the bizarre. A major theme running through Biel’s work is a poetic collision between beauty and the (sometimes cruel) absurdity of the contemporary world. This collision produces a variety of situations, ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime, all of which reveal a vulnerable sense of humanity.

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Colors:

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• psychology.n.01
• identity.n.01
• dream.n.01
• emotion.n.01
• metaphor.n.01