The circus has come to town, courtesy of Joe Coleman (b. 1955), painter, performer, and collector of the odd, unusual, and grotesque, from mummies to side show ephemera to true crime artifacts.
The artist is currently enjoying two star turns. One is as the subject of , a nonfiction narrative film directed by Scott Gracheff that premiered this weekend at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival. The other is as curator of “Carnival,” a wild group show at Jeffrey Deitch, also in New York, that seamlessly melds Coleman’s own paintings and offbeat holdings with high-end art by the likes of Derrick Adams, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, George Condo, and Anne Imhof.
The show also includes Coleman’s magnum opus, a life-size portrait of his wife, Whitney Ward, in his signature hyperrealistic style. Working with jewelers’ glasses and paintbrushes so fine he has been known to use one with just a single hair, Coleman has illustrated Ward’s entire life, filling every square inch of the canvas with different vignettes drawn from her biography. Nearly four years in the making, the painting’s creation became the heart of , which itself actually began production way back in 2012.
The painting, , is a companion piece to Coleman’s self portrait, . Coleman’s approach to portraiture is unique, choosing to incorporate minute details into text-rich paintings that craft a compelling narrative and demand close looking. An art school dropout, he works unconventionally, completing one small section at a time until the blank canvas is entirely filled in, rather than sketching out the entire composition with a preliminary drawing.
“I don’t know what the whole image is going to become—it grows organically,” Coleman said in the movie.
The film begins with Coleman already about one year into work on the painting. (“I can’t believe he started with the rack,” Ward tells the cameras, standing next to a canvas that so far depicts only her shoulders, upper arms, and ample cleavage in the central portrait.)
Joe Coleman, (2011–15). Photo: courtesy of Whitney Ward.
Long before the song “Nasty” wondered “Is somebody gonna match my freak?” there were Coleman and Ward. She’s a dominatrix and photographer (and suspects her 1998 profile in the helped cost editor-in-chief Tina Brown her job). He’s bitten the heads off live rats and detonated explosives strapped to his chest during his performances. In recounting their love story in the film, Ward spoke fondly of introducing him to her mother’s ashes on an early date, taking the lid off the urn so the two could hold hands through a fistful of human remains.
At their wedding 25 years ago, Coleman arrived at the ceremony at Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum via hearse, and was carried up the aisle in a wicker casket. The officiant was “Dutch,” a ventriloquist dummy who invoked the power of Satan before pronouncing them man and wife (and is among the objects on view in “Carnival”).
Installation view of “Carnival” curated by Joe Coleman. The works on view include a waxen effigy of St. Agnes in the foreground, flanked by two fantasy coffins of the artist and his wife, Whitney Ward, in their wedding attire by Ghanaian artist Theophilus Nii Anum Sowah. Photo: courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
“Whitney and I are so fortunate that we found each other. And you know, it’s almost like in this lifetime we were searching for each other,” Coleman told me. “Psychics have said that we’ve been together many lives.”
Once introduced in public access TV interview as “a totally bizarre… despicable, vile, horrendous, rodent-like facsimile of a human,” Coleman is open about the dark chapters of his life, recounting his years of heroin addiction. At the depths of his ten-bag-a-day habit, Coleman would drive his taxi cab to an Alphabet City drug den, reach in with his money, get injected through a glory hole, and then pick up passengers.
Joe Coleman, (2019). Photo: courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
But his years as a cabbie also facilitated his entry into the art world. In 1986, he happened to pick up David Owsley, then a curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Before the ride was over, Owsley had agreed to a detour to see Coleman’s first-ever solo show at a gallery called Chronocide. (The owner, who lived upstairs, kindly opened up the show in the middle of the night.)
“David bought two paintings from that show. Later he showed me where they were hanging in his home, and they were between an actual Brueghel painting and a work by Reverend William Blayney, an Outsider artist,” Coleman said. “He got it started, you know, got the ball rolling.”
The film has a few glimpses of how Coleman has flourished in more conventional settings, such as his 2017 solo show at the Begovich Gallery at California State University, Fullerton. (Even then, the white cube gallery space was painted a deep red.)
Crowds at the opening of “Carnival, Curated by Joe Coleman” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: by Christos Katsiaouni, courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
But for the most part, the filmmakers stay firmly planted in Coleman and Ward’s world. Their home, now in an old Victorian upstate where they moved in 2020, is a veritable museum that he’s christened the “Odditorium” and hopes to open to private tours. The artist credits a childhood trip to Times Square to see the old Hubert’s Museum—a Coney Island-style attraction where Madame Tussaud’s wax museum now stands—for his fascination with the fun house aesthetic. (The original painting advertising the Hubert’s flea circus, from about 1935, is included in “Carnival.”)
“There was this kind of chamber of horror, with a woman in wax, and this one little door with a tiny window on it. And you could see this eye staring through this opening. It was frightening, but fascinating,” Coleman said. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I said ‘When I grow up, that’s where I wanna live. In the place that has the burlesque, the sideshow, the wax museum.’”
Johnny Meah, (1989). Photo: courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Darkness clearly fascinates Coleman, who has made paintings about drug use, murderers, and serial killers. (His piece inspired by the so-called Slenderman stabbing even led to a lawsuit with HBO.) But is at its heart a love story—and is nothing if not a labor of love.
“It was hard to finish because I didn’t want to stop making it, if that makes any sense,” Coleman admitted. “And Whitney told me that she missed me making her, because that I would constantly be asking her questions.”
The film indulges Coleman and Ward’s quirkiness, but it also acknowledges the realities of what it means to be an artist in New York City. Because he spent so many years singularly devoted to and then , Coleman wasn’t making or selling anything else. (Coleman didn’t want to talk prices, but his record at auction, set in 2011 at Christie’s New York, is $98,500, according to the Artnet Price Database.)
Joe Coleman paints with jeweler’s glasses in a still from (2025). Photo: by Gregg de Domenico.
As the film goes on, the need to sell the painting so they don’t go broke is very real. is unveiled to great fanfare during Art Basel Miami Beach, as part of Deitch’s 2015 “Unrealism” show with dealer Larry Gagosian.
Seeing the work in person today, reunited with at Jeffrey Deitch, is not to be missed—although they have plenty of competition amid the eye-catching display, which includes paintings hanging from the ceiling by Johnny Meah, who’s been called “the last carnival sideshow banner painter.”
There is a full-scale, bedazzled carousel by Raúl de Nieves, and an interactive Narcissister sculpture in which you crank a bike pedal to activate a praxinoscope—a kind of spinning flip book that creates animation—cheekily nestled amid the pubic hair of a female circus performer mannequin clad in sequined-trimmed pink spandex.
And then there’s a life-size wax model of Johnny Eck, a sideshow performer born without legs due to a rare congenital disorder affecting the development of the lower spine. Coleman has brought together a collection of archival photographs from Eck’s life and career, as well as puppets that Eck made himself and the working Railmaster train that he used to bring with him to fairs and carnivals across the country for children to ride. (It’s one of only two surviving models, built by Bruce Rowell in the 1940s.)
Another highlight is (1984–2002), Tom Duncan’s mechanized miniature of the boardwalk and amusement park at Coney Island, crafted over the course of nearly 20 years from found objects.
You’ll spot life-size funerary sculptures of Coleman and Ward lying in caskets in their wedding garb by Ghanaian artist Theophilus Nii Anum Sowah, who specializes in fantasy coffins.
Also from Coleman’s personal collection is a waxen effigy of the martyred St. Agnes said to contain a piece of her actual bone, displayed next to wax figures of serial killer Richard Ramirez and cult leader Charles Manson by Hollywood practical effects sculptor Henry Alvarez. And there are elaborate nautical-themed costumes that Ward made for the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, where she and Coleman are the reigning king and queen.
Installation view of “Carnival” curated by Joe Coleman. Two paintings by Derrick Adams are displayed next to an Octopus Mermaid Queen costume designed by his wife, Whitney Ward, with Mr. Gorgeous, for the 2024 Coney Island Mermaid Parade. Photo: courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
The exhibition grew out of his most recent book, . When it came out last fall, Deitch, who had included the artist in group shows in the past, agreed to interview him at a talk promoting the 450-page tome.
“After, Jeffrey had a big party at his home, and he and I got to talking. He just got it in his head that he wanted me to curate this carnival show,” Coleman said. (Deitch has long had a fondness for Coney Island, curating the “Coney Island Walls” outdoor street art museum from 2015 to 2018.)
Installation view of “Carnival” curated by Joe Coleman, showing a wax figurine of sideshow performer Johnny Eck, and his train. Photo: courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
It proved the perfect partnership, with Deitch there to help bring in contemporary artists exploring carnival-related themes to go with the works that Coleman picked out, including by his friends from the burlesque, sideshow, and Mardi Gras communities.
“Those really complement the show in a really great way and go perfectly with the older, you know, crazy stuff,” Coleman said, “I didn’t have access to them, but Jeffrey did.”
KAWS, , 1998. Photo: courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
That’s not entirely true. The street artist Chris “DAZE” Ellis is a longtime friend due to their shared interest in Coney Island. And there is also a piece by KAWS, who has become well-known as a collector with a penchant for Outsider art, and included Coleman in a show of his holdings at New York’s Drawing Center.
And the film has a few celebrity cameos from fans of Coleman’s work such as singer Iggy Pop and guitarist Dave Navarro. He also has a studio visit with actor and filmmaker Asia Argento, a friend who appears in the painting and also cast Coleman in her debut film, (2000), in a role inspired by her alleged sexual assault at the hands of producer Harvey Weinstein.
Joe Coleman and Whitney Ward at the opening of “Carnival, Curated by Joe Coleman” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: by Christos Katsiaouni, courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Less sympathetic is Coleman’s time with a friend and painting subject, Sam “Sammytown” McBride, a punk singer for the band Fang who killed his girlfriend, Dixie Lee Carney. It’s a reminder that many of Coleman’s works depict, if not celebrate, humanity’s darkest impulses, blurring light and shadow.
“It’s a show that you can keep going back to and finding more,” said Coleman. ”And the same is true for my paintings, too.”
How Dark My Love
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
