Today we talk about

Joe Davidson

A very fertile mind and in constant activity in the search for new expressive themes. Joe Davidson works with a variety of materials such as Scotch tape ™ used as a medium to create Californian landscapes taken from photographs of the surrounding environment; ceramics, plaster and plaster casts to create hyper-realistic sculptures of sandbags and construction gravel and flowers and sunflowers with which he creates immense site-specific installations; and then plastic and foam to give life to his huge city installations seen from above; and then the colored balloons that refer to
childhood memories; rounded shapes that extend almost into tentacles, spherical objects that appear more like the abstraction of the womb or breast of the mother, deprived of any realistic reference but still reminding the shape of a small container created to protect and defend . There are two main characteristics: on the one hand the assembly technique whereby both in the “pictorial” version of the Landscapes, and in the sculptural version of many other works; the accumulation of the object, the repetitiveness of the gestures, and the overlapping of the material, pose as its marking and identification characteristics. On the other, a constant reference to biomorphic and organic forms that make his works, especially the most recent, terribly sensual and sexy. The need to “touch”, to caress, to check if those shapes so soft to the eye are also soft to the fingers; an unstoppable need made of senses and meaning. And finally the colors that, starting from a total and pure white, pass through gold to end in pastel colors to accentuate the need for childhood memory perhaps driven by the need for purification and catharsis.

Joe Davidson showed is works in Italy

His works

EDUCATION

1996   MFA Sculpture. San Francisco Art Institute. San Francisco, CA.

1992   BFA Sculpture. University of Massachusetts. Amherst, MA. AWARDS/HONORS

2009  C.O.L.A. Fellowship. Department of Cultural Affairs. Los Angeles, CA.

2003  Juried Exhibition. Korean Cultural Center. Los Angeles, CA

2000  Juror’s Award. Annual Exhibition. Berkeley Art Center. Juried by Clara Kim.

1995   Internship with David Ireland. San Francisco Art Institute. San Francisco, CA

1996   Cadogan Fellowship. San Francisco Foundation. San Francisco, CA. Sculpture.

1994   SFAI Grant. San Francisco Art Institute. San Francisco, CA.

He showed his works in many countries around the world: Italy, Texas, Hungary, Mexico and Corea and in each country newspapers and magazines have talked about him.

His technique