ABOUT
BIO
Joe Korzen (b.1984 in Warren, Mi) is a self-taught Denver, CO based painter. Working primarily in acrylics and charcoal on canvas, his work is rooted in psychological, philosophical, spiritual, and cultural frameworks.
Korzen’s studio practice is one of study and rehearsal, with the actual painting being done in short sprints with periods of review and reflection in between sprints. As a multi-disciplined musician and songwriter, he approaches his painting in a similar way to his songwriting; generally viewing the finished canvas as both a record of an improvised performance, and a record of an idea that has been rehearsed.
Korzen is colorblind (protanomaly), and typically works with a limited color palette, preferring to focus on the balance between values rather than the colors themselves. His use of color is based heavily in theory, and he tends to favor bold hues in most of his work. Drawing from his aerospace engineering background, his techniques are influenced by mechanics and flow and his work often includes schematic themes and calculated gestural movements. Korzen’s work varies greatly in texture, from heavy impasto application to thinned acrylics that act as dyes. Korzen prefers to paint with palette knives whenever possible, but frequently uses brushes, and occasionally makes use of various engineering and woodworking tools in his work.
Exploring subjects like metaphorical dualism, religion, animism, physical and mental illness, and collective consciousness in his work, Korzen views most of his work as some sort of abstract combination of a Venn diagram and Rorschach ink blot test, in which the abstract comparison of two or more subjects results in new, often unexpected, insights.
His work currently includes an on-going series titled “Young Soul Old Soul” which explores the consistencies and discrepancies between Jungian Psychology and Animism through a mostly ancient Slavic paganism lens. Works in this series were inspired by subjects such as Jung’s theory of mapping the unconscious mind compared with an animistic understanding of existence, and the ancient Slavs’ beliefs of both god/goddess and ancestral protection compared with Jung’s theory on the psychological trap of anima/animus worship and the divine externalization of non-integrated parts of the psyche.
Korzen’s work has been featured in the short film “Spin To Win” (2021), and in the Burbank Arts Online Art Gallery in 2020.