OFF THE RAILS:
WORKS ON PAPER BY JOSEPH (2005-2007)
This is the first-known solo exhibition of works on paper by Joseph, that were made and sold in, and featured, the New York City subway system. These artworks capture our gnawing existential dread as it truly is — interwoven with our humanity, humor, beauty, and mysticism. On the heels of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl confrontation with power, identity, and exclusion, Joseph’s art further interrogates the question: who are the outsiders?
Precisely rendered in crayon, pencil, and marker on white 8.5 x 11 copy paper and mounted onto found cardboard, Joseph’s urban landscapes shimmer with shifting perspectives. Figures of stereotypical businessmen are collaged from yesterday’s papers. Streetlights and full moons differ only in scale. His subway trains sometimes rumble contentedly over elevated tracks—other times, they veer off the rails, under siege by hovering UFOs.
Defiant resourcefulness is one of many parallels between Joseph’s vision and practice and that of fellow artist Otis Houston Jr., who was making and exhibiting message-driven multimedia installations beside the FDR Drive while Joseph made the subway system his studio, gallery, subject, and setting.
As outside forces shape public responses to our racialized, disabled, and unhoused selves, Joseph’s works imagine new possibilities beyond the known. In Joseph’s practice, premonitions of disaster make fertile ground for fierce and loving acts of resistance, reclaiming the right – even the responsibility – to be seen, to belong, and to create.
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