Joe Coleman Photo by Whitney Ward.
D.B. Denholtz Photo by Rhonda Johnson.
Amidst the many marvels alive in Joe Coleman's audacious art are myriad denizens of the freakshow, the sideshow, and Coney Island. In this rare live interview with Joe, alongside a multimedia presentation, we explore his paintings, his film appearances, and his own words to understand how this great American artist has been influenced and shaped by the worlds of sideshow and Coney Island.
Joe Coleman is a world-renowned painter, writer and performer who has exhibited for four decades in major museums throughout the world including one-man exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, the Barbican Centre in London, Tilton Gallery and Dickinson Gallery in New York. He was featured in the "Unrealism" show in Miami presented by Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian.
His performance work from the 1980's was some of the most radical of its time, and can be seen in the films Mondo New York (1988) and Captured (2008). The book on extreme performance, Avant Garde from Below: Transgressive Performance from Iggy Pop to Joe Coleman and G.G. Allin by Clemens Marschall, explores Coleman's influence during this pivotal period.
An avid and passionate collector, Coleman's "Odditorium" is a private museum where sideshow objects, wax figures, crime artifacts and works of religious devotion live together to form a dark mirror that reflects the alternative side of the American psyche. His work has been published in numerous books, prints and records.
Joe Coleman was the subject of an award-winning feature length documentary, Rest in Pieces: A Portrait of Joe Coleman (1997). He has appeared in acting roles in films such as Asia Argento's Scarlet Diva (2000) and The Cruel Tale of the Medicine Man (2015). He appears as himself in The Lower East Side episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown.
Interviewer D.B. Denholtz has been writing and researching the history of sideshow and outsider art since the 1980s. His work has appeared in the art magazine Raw Vision, and he is a co-publisher and editor of the journal Shocked & Amazed! On & Off the Midway. D.B. is the founder of the online encyclopedia and image archive www.showhistory.com. He has twice lectured at The Coney Island Museum's Ask The Experts series. In 2015 he wrote the lead essay for the catalog of “Side Show,” a Yale University School of Art show about the intersection of fine art and the sideshow. His first book on the obscure topic of souvenir Giant’s rings is forthcoming in 2023.
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