Retinal Stigmatics: An Evening With Joe Coleman

A live multimedia midnight mass with one of the world's greatest living surrealists, Joe Coleman . July 15th at 11:55 pm, Hall Theatre, Montreal

There is no short or easy way to describe Joe Coleman to those unfamiliar with his mindblowing body of work. Painter, performance artist, poet, filmmaker, hell%u2019s historian and cultural terrorist are several labels that fit, but none tell the full story. He is frequently hailed as this era%u2019s Salvador Dali. Longtime fan Charles Manson refers to him as a caveman in a spaceship, and that%u2019s perhaps as ideal a description as any other. He is among the greatest living surrealists, an artworld anomaly so ferociously vital and shattering that his work can invoke true states of madness. Once seen, Joe Coleman%u2019s visions of the damned are impossible to shake off.

When he began his public career, Coleman%u2019s performance art shows were confrontation acts of the highest order. It was not uncommon for him to ignite explosives tied to his body or take the stage with a severed pig%u2019s head strapped to his crotch. He would adopt personas so horrifying that audiences actually feared for their lives. Several shows led to him being arrested. Today, Coleman has successfully channeled his rage through precise, iconographic art that traumatizes and provokes like nothing you can imagine.

Coleman%u2019s work explores the darkest of societal ills and freakish forgotten history in ways that are as heartbreaking as they are harrowing. By scratching deeply into open wounds and fusing cold fact with hot emotion, he obtains insight into the unthinkable. Most fittingly, his work has been described as an ongoing social autopsy. While many of his depictions are of cruel and terrible events, usually rooted in fact, his work is embedded with extraordinary compassion. It is perhaps for this reason above all others that many of his canvasses have an acutely distressing impact that is almost unbearable.

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