"Joseph Seeman's Loud, Fast, Art"

By Arcadia

Tattoo Savage- Winter 1995

The problem with doing "alternative" art is that…well, it's so freaking alternative. It appeals to a sensibility that was formed (or warped) during the sixties and seventies, and nourished (so to speak) on prolonged bouts of television viewing, comic books, advertising graphics and all the weird "space-age" kitsch that our fifties parents crammed into their suburban mansions. Strangely, this assemblage of skillful schlock has birthed an exciting new visual renaissance in which traditional "high art" techniques are now used to render "low brow" imagery and ideas. The final product is one that leaves most over-educated fine art mavens curling their lips and hissing in disgust.

Joseph Seeman has experienced this phenomenon. In his hometown of South Beach, Florida, there is no longer a single gallery that will show his work, despite his overwhelming success at the "Unknown Artist Gallery", where his paintings were selling at a fast and furious clip until the place closed down. Why this deficiency for venues for cool stuff in oh-so-trendy South Beach? Joey hasn't got a clue. He laments, "It's amazing—this town has tons of young transient kids looking for something cool to buy. But there are no longer any galleries catering to this element. There are no more alternative galleries."

This situation led Joey to New York City, where he made the usual artist's rounds of the galleries, pestering people to look at his portfolio. "They say they can't take on an artist without a following, but how are you supposed to get a following unless they show your work? We need a place where people are willing to take chance with the work that they show."

The galleries have put themselves in a strange position. The owners whine incessantly (especially when it comes time to pay the artist) that they're having such a hard time making ends meet because very few people are willing to drop gobs of money to purchase art anymore. But they don't think that they can make any money showing work from young artists whose stuff is selling for a couple of grand. "There's no audience for this kind of work" they say. How would they know, when their idea of "alternative" is artwork that was considered cutting edge ten years ago? They'll hang this tired stuff then decide when no one buys it, that there's no audience "for all this new non-sense". The problem is, most gallery owners wouldn't know "new" if it crawled into bed with them and gave them a big, wet sloppy kiss.

But all was not a bummer on his trip to New York. The famous street-style designer, Anna Sui, took one look at Joey's portfolio and bought two of his designs, a bondage girl and a devil for her T-shirt line, which later appeared in Vogue and Spin magazines. That was a nice confidence booster for Joey.

So, he keeps cranking out work- about four large pieces per month- and when some brave person hangs them on a gallery wall, they sell like condoms at an orgy. Why? Because this is stuff that's real- imagery we can relate to. Take his "Fine Americans" series which he describes as a tribute to "people who invade your life via the media, like gangsters and sports stars, and just get stuck in your brain and change you somehow". The piece is organized into a pair of 3ftX4ft panels (one for the guys and one for the girls). The guy's section shows folks like Charles Bukowski, Michael Jordan, James Brown, Buzz Aldrin, Zippy the Pinhead, John Dillinger, William S. Burroughs and Ed Wood Jr. On the lady's panel there are likenesses of the Ronettes, Courtney Love, Patty Hearst, Heidi Fleiss, Eleanor Roosevelt and Elsie (Hey, Joey, what's this--no Aunt Jemima?) These celebrity icons rock n'roll and rattle around in everybody's brain pan.

And then there's Joey's work in progress, a loving tribute to Mexican wrestlers. I didn't think I knew anything about the sport--til I saw the work, and recognized all the wrestlers. Scary isn't it, what sneaks into your head and lives there festering? Joey paints with acrylics "because I like to go really fast and I don't have the patience for oils," and he describes his work as "loud, colorful and ugly- like life when you're living it right." Sometimes the final piece surprises him, for he doesn't plan anything out before he picks up his brush and sloshes it into the paint. Instead, he just makes a quick grab at whatever is rattling around in his subconscious at that particular moment in time, then he hauls it out wet, squalling and squirming, and slaps it to life on the canvas.

A member of the multi-media generation, Joey tries to get gallery owners to let him bring in a band to play appropriate tunes while people are checking out his stuff. He also tends to incorporate text with his imagery. "One of my biggest influences is William Burroughs, he did this cool technique called 'cut-ups'. What he did was he would slice up a page of writing and randomly re-assemble it. It's weird because a lot of times the slashed up version makes more sense than the original piece. So that's what I do, I randomly juxtapose things I've read, seen on TV, or overheard in a bar or on the street with my imagery." "I want to see how much I can get away with and still have people accept my work. That's why I enjoy doing public stuff- CD covers, murals, installations- I like to subject people to things they might not normally come in contact with. I like to be an irratant...but not so much that I totally alienate people."