The Demon of Regret: New Works by Joseph Buckley

About

Joseph Buckley’s writing, sculpture and video works draw from a myriad of sources, including daily life, societal horrors and mainstream media. His work is also heavily influenced by science fiction, fantasy and post-colonial theory. Buckley uses cartoons and a bright color palette to allow distance and space for viewers’ reflective consideration of darker aspects of humanity.

The installation is comprised of four works: a floor piece, a relief sculpture on facing walls, a large cabinet of drawings and a video. Upon entering The Demon of Regret, visitors are immediately surrounded by, and begin walking on a bright red plastic floor. The vinyl red floor of No News News ties the room together, with cardboard boxes splayed throughout the space, coated in hand-drawn images derived from line drawings by survivors of North Korean prison camps. Buckley considers the space itself as a battleground between two opposing but interconnecting forces. The sculptural work, My Clone Sons are wall mounted relief sculptures of curators and auctioneers based on characters created in Buckley’s previous work. In an industrial display case containing a series of drawings, ElfOrc Box, we see the transition of a person into one of J. R. R. Tolkien’s orcs: “a race of sentient upright beings, former elves captured and tortured into monsters.” In the final work in the exhibition, the video The Black Bastard Bacchus, a club security guard pours water over a crowd of music fans, holding the audience back while hydrating them, while simultaneously reciting stories Buckley has written.

Buckley aims to develop a continuum of work so that throughout his practice the pieces of his oeuvre are interconnected. His wide-ranging artwork is purposefully self-referential while at the same time reflects his keen attention to the outside world.