JOE ROBERTS "LSD WORLDPEACE"
Opening Reception: Friday March 27 6-10PM
Exhibition Dates: March 27 - March 29
Joe Roberts has worked as an artist in San Francisco for the last decade. His mixed media work has been released in various formats over the years and shown nationwide to great acclaim. The tenth imprint from Unpiano Books is a curated survey of his career thus far in the form of a softbound 160-page book featuring 142 full color reproductions of his work. As an independent publisher, Unpiano Books aims to support and promote lesser-known artists with specialized small-run releases both locally and across the country.
Joe creates artwork which represents a variety of mixed media formats and is reminiscent of work from Jean-Michel Basquiat and Joseph Cornell. Collage, paintings, diorama and figurines all play a role in the world he has created and is constantly reinterpreting.
“ …It is in Joe's work that we can best see this influence of family, and this deeply veined exploration of the afterlife, the sublime. Childhood caricatures mingle with one another in cavernous hallways and catacombs, float weightlessly in starry skies. Watches stop, time stops, time circles around and we are back at the beginning. Back to what we share with the ones who are gone.”
- Myla Dalbesio, 2014
“Joe Roberts’ journey to the unknown is dotted with the protective guardians of childhood nostalgia. These come in the flavors of films, comics, candies, logos, and branding of the 80s and early 90s, not to mention latent countercultural references from 60-70s. This is the bulk of the content in his works and it is these references that place him in his time period and in a group of people bent on breaking through the illusions and finding themselves.”
- Matthew Ronay, 2014
JOE ROBERTS (b. 1976) grew up in in Madison, Wisconsin. Comic books made up the bulk of his childhood reading material, and their influence persists in his current work. Joe attended San Francisco Art Institute, where he claims he mainly learned about drugs. Through the use of crayons, paper and found objects, his work creates a world of cartoon imagery laced with personal symbology and humor. Joe currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.
UNPIANO BOOKS (Publisher) is an independent book publisher based out of New York. They specialize in photo and art books and currently operate on a timeline of seasonal releases. Since publishing Sandy Kim’s first monograph in 2009, Unpiano has sought to publish both emerging artists and artists from previous generations who never before had the opportunity to give their work a wider audience. They have worldwide distribution and cater to a variety of brick-and-mortar bookstores, museums and art spaces as well as online booksellers. In addition, they self-distribute via their retail website and at book fairs across the country. Artists released through Unpiano Books include: Sandy Kim, Jay Howell, Mel Kadel, Casey Jones and Arthur Pollock among others.
MYLA DALBESIO (Introduction) is an American multi-disciplinary visual and performance artist and curator. Her work is greatly influenced by religion and ritualistic practices, the mystic patterns of the natural world, nostalgic tendencies, American trash culture, and the underlying sexual perversions within all humans. She is currently located in New York City where she also models as the one of the faces of Calvin Klein.