Joseph Teeling | Skin Arcade

About

the drawings feature fantasy portraits of a number of teeling’s friends. they present alternative identities for each personality, while maintaining striking likenesses.

the light boxes, produced locally in chinatown, borrow the aesthetics of the neighborhood shops. they speak to the environment of the commercial mall, within which ocdchinatown is located, whose similar signs promote goods and services. the portraits, drawn by hand, mimic what the artist describes as the chimeric effects and mutations of online exchange.

skin arcade also presents joseph teeling’s calendar for 2019, designed in collaboration with erin knutson.

in the artist’s words: these images are chimera. they are hybrids, like the hellenistic namesake, and fall under webster's "expressions of an impossible desire." such a desire is observable in excess in online communities. the myriad of forms apparent in these online expressions fascinate me. bestial, erotic and evocative of childhood, they are a triple threat to any notion of normativity. it’s hard to look away.  

skin arcade borrows this imaginative excess and hybrid language of chimeric mutation, fantasy and erotic anarchy, switching repeatedly from cartoon distortions to the formalisms of mirroring, representation and abstraction.

window-shopping in data feeds, we hope for a different future in this digital cul-de-sac. find a friend or a pet or a fuck. it's easy, create the query, enter and browse.

joseph teeling has previously worked with the collective no total, at artist space in new york city (2013-2016] and arika in glasgow, scotland [2014-2016].