Joel Dean

Joel Dean

The figures populating Joel Dean’s paintings move aimlessly, their facial features generically rendered or replaced by masks. They engage in careless acts of violence and carnality, and they are portrayed both still and in motion. Sex, when it occurs, is accompanied by voyeurism. These are youthful creatures of undefined ages, generally no older than their twenties. In Dean’s three most recent major paintings, the world is a purple, humid darkness. Candles are occasionally present in the work from 2008 and 2009, but they emit no light, only tendrils of smoke that travel the vertical length of the canvas and create a vaguely ritualized atmosphere. In “Blunderers,” and “Interracial Couple with Abstract Element,” the smoke lines have evolved into tentacles that crisscross the canvas horizontally, interrupting the image.

Though they do not have specific faces, these young people are nonetheless familiar. They evoke that difficult phase of growing up when earlier, simpler beliefs fall away, but there is nothing convincing to fill the void. It is therefore quite fitting that the qualities that best define Dean’s figures are what they lack. Their bodies are constructed without sharp lines or angles, their eyes are rarely defined, and those that do have eyes stare with more or less unfocused gaze. Listlessness is the operative term, and there is no individual identity, only vague association. Above all, these young men and women seem to lack volition, the ability to choose a direction and act energetically. They are foot soldiers in the zombie army of the uncommitted. At one time or another, we have all been among their ranks.

Images: Inter-Racial Couple with Abstract Element, courtesy of Joel Dean

Profile by Daniel Gerwin