Joseph Yaeger is an American artist whose paintings explore the unstable terrain between perception and representation. His cinematic visual language captures scenes of recognition and detachment, electrified in their unresolvability. In his investigations of the role of imagery in cultural memory, Yaeger draws from a fragmented archive of film stills, magazine clippings, and YouTube videos. These sources are reconfigured and obscured through his painterly process, conjuring a visual setting that is at once familiar and elusive. Pushing the boundaries of his materials, Yaeger applies watercolor onto canvas or linen heavily layered with gesso, producing a distinctive, textured surface of glossy weight and translucency. His anonymous protagonists are submerged in ambiguous emotional states, suspended in moments that resist narrative closure. Often tightly cropped or partially effaced, the figures and scenes withhold clarity, offering only glimpses into a subject matter. Born in 1986 in Montana, USA, and currently based in London, Yaeger proposes new ways of seeing and feeling, gesturing toward a space where perception falters and the image reverberates with personal and collective memory.
