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Last Update: Mon Jul 1 14:33:19 on my laptop in Pullman, WA.
Recent features include New American Paintings, Create! Magazine, Arts In Square and the Innovate Artist Award.
Upcoming exhibitions include a three-person show with Sarah Barnett and Reza Safavi at Terrain Gallery in Spokane, WA in May 2025 and a solo show at Helen S. Smith Gallery Green River College Auburn, WA winter 2026.
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Cloud Control, 2019, oil on canvas, oil on canvas over wood panel, monitors, CRT television with video of a B.F. Skinner training a pigeon, mini-computer, guitar pedals, cords, cables, time capsule, bubble wrap, video with sound of a prepared desktop performance utilizing Adobe Photoshop, Google Image Search and Quicktime
> I am an intermedia artist with a practice that weaves together oil painting, new media, and installation art. My multimedia works examine how digital and analog systems mediate and condition human perception and lived experiences. Growing up in rural southwest Ohio, I spent my childhood drawing and my adolescence writing alternative rock songs with my band July For Kings. I now live in Pullman, Washington, the ultimate liminal space, with my partner Jiemei Lin and our five-year-old son. I am also the founder of Pullman Arts Foundation, a nonprofit formed with the goal of helping artists in my town.
~ % The tension between a digitally networked, screen- based experience of the world and a physical, more tactile experience has never been more acute. My works reflect this fragmented reality by combining painting on canvases with screens, tablets and other electronics and materials. My work is both a celebration of the unexpected creative possibilities within our technological and art historical milieu, and a lamentation for our collective loss of human agency and embodied experience as more and more of our decisions are influenced by unknowable algorithms and artificial intelligence. My hope is that by looking at painting as a form of media technology we might see contemporary forms of media more objectively and more critically.
~ % To contact me via email, my email address is my firstname dot my lastname and then the letter that comes after F and then the word mail and then finally a dot com.
~ % Here is my CV. I probably need to update it.
Joe Hedges, installation view of three new works, 2024. I have been experimenting with found stereos and radios and other small devices. I cut the holes in wooden panels with a CNC router.
Joe Hedges, Disciple, oil on custom panel with stereo, 2023
Enunciate, oil on panel with tape recorder, 2023
Accuracy You Can Trust, oil on panel with blood pressure monitor, 2023
Accuracy You Can Trust, oil on panel with blood pressure monitor, 2023
Please Rewind
oil on panel with VHS tape rewinder (yes, that's an actual thing haha), 2023
Infrastructure, Oil and spray paint on canvas, satellite dish, 2024.
Infrastructure (detail), oil paint, acrylic, spray paint
Joe Hedges, Game this Algorithm, oil on canvas, 2023
Joe Hedges, Monarch, oil on custom panel with stereo, 2023
Joe Hedges, Phantom Limbs, oil on canvas, 2023
Washing Machine Piece, oil, acrylic and spray paint on unstretched canvas, wire, rope, foil emergency blanket, sound, washing machine, 2023. Installation view at Enclave Contemporary in Shenzhen, China.
Heterotic (detail) oil on three canvas panels, looping videos on flatscreen tv's
Smooth & Shiny, 2019, oil on canvases in found frames, cassette players, cassettes, found sounds, cycle timer, wooden shelf, plastic cup, pencil
Joe Hedges, Resolutions, acrylic and oil crayon over canvas over wood panel, radio, 2022
Joe Hedges
Joe Hedges, American Landscape (after William Hart), oil on FM receiver, 2022
The Mannerist Leg, acrylic, oil and spray paint on canvases, acrylic on Styrofoam, looping video on flatscreen television, EVA foam, Jpeg on monitor, media players, emergency blankets, suitcase.
Joe Hedges, Paul Extended (after Rembrandt's Old Man in a Military Costume) oil on wooden panel, 2021
Joe Hedges Hypercombines, installation view, Artworks, Loveland, CO
Joe Hedges, Jiemei, oil on canvas over styrofoam, flatscreen monitor, media player, looping video, 2021
Joe Hedges, Jiemei (detail), oil on canvas over styrofoam, flatscreen monitor, media player, looping video, 2021
We Care About You and Your Memories, 2018, oil on canvas, plastic storage containers, macbook, PC, monitors, electronics, glass, concrete. Installation View, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Washington State University
Joe Hedges, Flight, oil on canvas over panel, tape recorder, wood, 2022
Joe Hedges, Vouet Torso, oil on FM receiver, 2022
Joe Hedges, Doves (after Simon Vouet), oil on wood panel, radio
Joe Hedges, Archaeolatry, installation view, 2022
Joe Hedges, Archaeolatry, installation view, 2022
Madeleine Stowe, 2018, oil on panel, digital device displaying Madeleine Stowe's IMDB page
Telepresence, 2016, electronics, bamboo, plastic tarp, rope. Installation view in the living room of my old house haha, trying to conceive/prepare this piece for a show in Beijing, China.
Joe Hedges, Gulls, 2019, Atomic Clock, Wooden Level, Found Postcard, Blue Quartz Gemstones. Just a little provisional work comprised of things I bought at a nearby thrift store when I showed at Artworks Gallery in Loveland, CO
Xerography, 2016, 3D forestry glasses, xerox photocopy, wood, iphone, hardware. Viewers could look throuhg the glasses to see a 3D image of the crumpled paper
Inscriptions, 2018, oil on canvas, grommets, digital effects processor, speakers, tablet, video, shelf. This featured clips of talking heads discussing the idea of "echo chambers". The sound was modulated in real time with a reverb unit so that they sounded like they were in a cave. I showed this a few times and then the work was lost in the mail, oh well.
Island Hopping, 2019, oil on panel, Google image search on digital device
Installation view of oil paintings on panel with embedded digital device.
Artist Point (waterfall), 2019, oil on panel, video of browsing Instagram on digital device
Installation View, Hypercombines, Artworks, Loveland, CO
Free Transform, 2019, oil on canvas, mini-computer, cords, cables, monitor, cycle timer, website. This monitor displayed data about the rising temperatures of the world's oceans.
Free Transform (detail), 2019, oil on canvas, computer, cords, monitor with scrolling oceanographic temperature data
Centaurs, 2019, oil on canvas in found frame, television, guitar amplifier, arrow, wooden shelf, cords, cables, media player, video, audio. This piece has audio of an ambient backwards guitar solo that plays through the amplifier every few minutes. The monitor is an abstract video.
View with Imaginary River, 2019, oil on canvas, Yamaha PSR-75 Keyboard, guitar pedal, computer speaker, cables, C major chord with a suspended seventh. The keys are taped down and the chord plays indefinitely.
LEFT: Empire of Lightning, 2016 – scanner, synthetic cotton, repeat cycle timer, 5-gallon bucket, saltwater
RIGHT: Waves (after René Magritte), 2016 – oil on canvas. Installation view from621 Gallery in Tallahassee, FL. The timer would set the scanner off periodically, creating a lightning-like effect and making a noise in the gallery. The red bucket of saltwater did nothing but kept people guessing haha!
A busy summer preparing for an exhibition in Shenzhen, China
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