‘Justin Bieber says “I love you so much I fucking cum hearts”.’
 
Joe Becker is a Canadian artist who paints big bold canvases filled with the rich detritus of pop culture. Hellbound TV hosts, masturbating pop icons, cadaverous singers, cretinous comic book superheroes, ravenous cuddly toys, and deranged cartoon characters jostle for attention. His cast of Bosch-like figures can be seen performing strange, perverse, and often comic rituals which may once have had some sacred meaning but are now just empty responses against an ever-encroaching chaos. Others are full frame portraits of lovable furry creatures who look half-bemused by the attention they’re receiving as though such vanity was solely reserved for humans.

But Becker isn’t being cynical in his use of pop culture iconography from the ‘80s and ‘90s. These are characters to which he has a “generally honest and sincere” connection.

There is a sincere affection for some of the pop characters I paint. As a kid I was a weird little shit, I once individually drew every character from He-man, I then coloured them and then cut them out and placed each one in a heart shaped box, I still have it. Some people think that my paintings are fucked up or weird but I think the stuff I did as a kid is truly bizarre.

Oddly, some people find his work offensive. In particular, his paintings aimed at the cult of celebrity—Bieber cumming love hearts, Oprah taking a shit, Cobain after his suicide. These paintings may be “cheap shots” but Becker is serious in his “loathing” for the vacuous adulation of such “celebrities.”

I highly doubt frenzied 13 or 14 year old Biebettes or dippy North American white suburban woman who worship Lord Oprah are into emerging contemporary Canadian painters, so those two demographics will likely not be exposed to my work, but if they ever were and they were enraged by my work then fuck them. I have never received hate mail yet, and if I did I would print it out and frame it. What kind of an asshole gets mad at a static, silent work of art anyway?

Becker’s powerful, complex, and darkly comic canvases have been exhibited all across the globe with a selection of respected collectors snapping up his work as soon as its on the market. Understandable, as Becker is mining a rich seam of pop culture icons to create his challenging, beautiful, and subversive art.
 

‘Kurt Cobain.’
 

‘Cockmuncher.’
 

‘Oprah.’
 

‘Sinful Child.’
 

‘The Coronation for the Would Be King of the World.’
 

‘The Masked Card Game.’
 

‘Pigheaded: Where There is no Sense There is no Feeling.’
 

‘O.J. was here.’
 

‘Don’t Fuck with the F.R.C.’
 

‘Cathouse.’
 

‘Devil’s Bride.’
 

‘Three Barons of Hell.’
 

‘The Raped Bather.’
 

‘Effigy.’
 

‘Sloth Man.’
 

‘Slothman II.’
 

‘Who Farted?’
 

‘Fuckingroovin’.’
 
H/T Narwahl, Centre PHI, Franz Zumbach, Saatchi Art, and Beauty is Ugliness at Rest.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Sicko-Delic’: Luminous rednecks, grotesque goons and Day-glo freaks
‘Freaks’ portraits painted in the style of an ‘Old Master’