Joe Camoosa
My recent work marks a departure from the complexity and large scale of my paintings and drawings and dispenses with the Modernist trope of the all-over: allowing negative space, limited elements and materials to take the lead - to say more with less.
For the past year and a half I have countered my maximalist tendencies by creating concise, bold, graphic works on paper, Mylar or canvas that combine drawing and collage. This work relies on restraint; compositions are edited, rigorously arranged and rearranged to forge a singular image that reads as a symbol or icon.
My explorations focus on the relationships between shape, scale, pattern and repetition. The formal relationships are constantly at play and engaging an active parallel narrative between clarity, control, chaos and chance.
My work is informed by cartography, music, aerial and urban landscapes and architectural fragments.
I’m fascinated by shifts in perception - the momentary in-between space conjured by viewing what may appear to be an aerial landscape, map, or fragment of a building…the alternation between recognition and abstraction – of being someplace and nowhere at the same time.
Joe Camoosa was born in Asbury Park, New Jersey and lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. He received an MFA in painting and drawing from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia and graduated from Florida State University where he studied Mass Communication and Anthropology. Camoosa has exhibited in galleries in Atlanta, Nashville, Richmond and New York, and museums such as MOCA GA, Atlanta Contemporary, The Hudgens Center for the Arts, The Georgia Museum of Art, and The Macon Museum of Arts and Sciences and his work is held in numerous corporate and private collections. He is currently a member of the Studio Artists Program at Atlanta Contemporary and a 2016-2017 Walthall Fellow.