“Overjoyed”
by Joe Neave

Opening with the artist:
Saturday October 31st, 4-7 pm
Exhibition dates:
October 31st – November 21st 2015

Ten Haaf Projects is pleased to announce “Overjoyed” a solo show by Joe Neave. “With coloured pencil and watercolour, Neave creates drawings that always range between book illustration, comic and advertisements of bygone times. In a complex pictorial world he makes his way along the borders of sugar sweet aesthetic, absurdity through to solid viciousness and winking obscenity – he manages to let his work appear both provocative and charming.

The artist often chooses animals as a motif for his drawing. Through their actions, their dialogues and thoughts, but also through the individual settings they experience a consequent humanisation. Ostensibly, the works sometimes convey the character of a jolly children’s book, but in terms of content, Neave repeatedly employs stereotype clichés, takes social perceptions and attitudes for a ride and presents them mockingly to the beholder. A similar intention lies behind the recurrent pin up aesthetic of the 50s, through which he frequently approaches the relationship between man and woman, their traditional role ascription and the female sexualisation – sometimes implicitly and subtle, sometimes with a striking definiteness.

His drawings show a well-considered complexity and a passion for detail. At times it is very direct and immediately graspable – but occasionally even very small, almost subtly integrated elements can increase and sharpen the work’s humoristic quality. Moreover, Neave textually succeeds in capturing the absurdity and partly rough irony of his ‘stories’.

In the depiction of the common, the cryptically banal, and the grotesque Neave’s satiric-anarchic vein, his distinctive British humour and his artistic ability become apparent par excellence.” [Katharina Rebel M.A.]




Currently living and working in Berlin, Joe Neave was born in East Yorkshire, England in 1974. This is Joe Neave’s first solo show in The Netherlands. His work is in private and institutional collections throughout Europe.

Ten Haaf Projects gallery is still under construction. “Overjoyed” will be shown in a temporary location at Elandsstraat 44, 1016 SG Amsterdam.