Pratt Institute

Education

BFA University of the Arts, Philadelphia in 1976. numerous awards including a Guggenheim in 2008 & a Fulbright for work in Vietnam & Cambodia in 2006—‘07

Biography

Joe Fyfe (b. 1952) has shown his work internationally since the early 1980s. His work was included in the legendary “Times Square Show”, New York (1980) organized by Colab; and his work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Christian Lethert, Cologne; ACME, Los Angeles; James Graham & Sons, New York; and David Lusk Gallery, Memphis; among others. He is currently represented by Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne. Fyfe’s writings have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Artnet.com, Gay City News, Artcritical.com, Art On Paper, and BOMB, s well as numerous catalog essays. He has curated exhibitions for Zurcher Studio, New York; Cheim & Read, New York; and Apex Art, New York, among other venues.

“Fyfe’s recent work – which operates in the elastic territory between painting, sculpture and drawing – explores both the legacy and current realities of non-representational art. In his own work, his writings and curatorial projects – including the polemical exhibition ‘Le Tableau’ that he organized for New York’s Cheim & Read in 2010 – Fyfe acknowledges the earlier utopian ambition of non-representational art whilst simultaneously accommodating a more pragmatic (and often joyful) approach to the ebb-and-flows of our material culture.

Amplifying the poetics of the everyday, the marginal and the overlooked, Fyfe increasingly repurposes found materials – a child’s kite, a discarded sign, or an abandoned banner – into his near-abstract compositions that are informed as much by serendipity as they are by any kind of high-minded formalism. In doing so Fyfe establishes a tension in his work, a push-pull between chance and deliberation, which in turn endows his deceptively informal works with an obsessive precision.” —current bio for White Columns exhibition, Oct 27-Dec. 15 2012