Joey Tepedino at Hal Bromm

Sep 21

Ralob Bluck, 2022, mixed media on canvas

Joey Tepedino, a Pennsylvania artist who seeks to portray his own complex emotional cartoon through bewildering, effervescent, brightly-colored works on canvas, brings his work to Hal Bromm’s Tribeca gallery in a solo-exhibition entitled Macrocosmic Minds. It opens Sept 21 with a reception at 6 pm.

Tepedino says his work attempts to "burst through feelings of anxiety" to "experience everything all at once." His body of work seeks to explore the complexities of the human experience, through the exploration of his own.

Jeffy Smith, 2023, mixed media on canvas

The self-taught artist, whose work combines abstraction with hints of the figurative in the manifold character that populate his pieces, was featured in several group exhibitions at Hal Bromm before returning in his solo debut.

"It blows my mind," Tepedino said. "I was reading Keith Haring's diary a few years ago. I love his stuff and the fact that I'm in the same gallery where Keith Haring had his first show..It's very surreal."

Haring does not present in Tepedino’s work, which probably owes more to the likes of outsider artists like Jean Dubuffet and Pierre Vuitton. And the presence of skulls, tribal masks and busy bursts of energy suggest the common influence of Basquiat.

Tepedino’s oeuvre includes wild, twisted, and brutish works in bright colors that contain suggestions of anguish and torment. Jagged lines come together to form untamed figures whose expressions invite the viewer to consider the complexities of their own emotions.

"I've always drawn all over everything. I used to work at this one place, and I would draw all over the tables," he said of his early art experiences. He transferred those impromptu drawings to canvas, sometimes working on full-sized canvases, other times on canvases as small as six by four inches.

"It's all mood, how I'm feeling. And I keep coming back to it, so it's not like I do it all in one shot. It's me just putting my brain onto the canvas."

His oeuvre includes wild, twisted, and brutish works in bright colors that contain suggestions of anguish and torment. Jagged lines come together to form wild figures whose expressions invite the viewer to consider the complexities of emotion.

"I started painting just for myself... just throwing myself onto the canvas… putting it all out there,” he said.

Macrocosmic Minds runs Sept. 21 through Dec. 20 at Hal Bromm gallery, 90 West Broadway in Manhattan.