Joe Roberts

The Gopherwoods

Opening Reception: Saturday, December 2nd, 6 – 9 pm

Exhibition Dates: December 2nd, 2023 – January 13th, 2024

GGLA is pleased to announce our next exhibition, a solo presentation by Joe Roberts titled The Gopherwoods, opening this Saturday, December 2, with a reception from 6-9 PM. In these free-form drawings and paintings, Roberts continues his practice guided by psychedelia.

7 Flower Station, 11 x 14 in, Acrylic On Wood Panel, 2023

Cloud Creek Station, 11 x 14 in, Acrylic on Wood Panel, 2023

Seraphim Station 2, 11 x 14 in, Acrylic on Wood Panel, 2023

Grove Street Station, 11x14 in, Acrylic on Wood Panel, 2023

Seraphim Station 1, 11x14 in, Acrylic on Wood Panel, 2023

Deep Leaves, 22x28 in, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas, 2022

New Club Section 13, 33 x 41 in, Collage on Cardboard, 2023

Dead Dead Gang, 24 x 18 in, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Wood Panel, 2023

Smokey Earth 12, 16 x 20 in, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Wood Panel, 2023

Everyone Had Tarantism, 24 x 30 in, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Wood Panel, 2023

The Gopherwoods, 24 x 30 in, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Wood Panel, 2023

New Club Section 12, 29 x 38.5 in, Collage on Illustration Board, 2023

En Plein Air 2, 11 x 14 in, Acrylic on Canvas, 2022

En Plein Air 7, 11 x 14 in, Acrylic on Canvas, 2022

En Plein Air 6, 11 x 14 in, Acrylic on Canvas, 2022

En Plein Air 3, 11 x 14 in, Acrylic on Canvas, 2022

En Plein Air 5, 11 x 14 in, Acrylic on Canvas, 2022

En Plein Air 4, 11 x 14 in, Acrylic on Canvas, 2022

In the Old Testament, Noah is said to have built his great animal and civilization-saving ark from Gopherwood, a term that only appears once throughout the whole bible. Taking this mysterious term as a jumping off point, San Francisco-based painter Joe Roberts conjures a multitude of enveloping universes within his latest works, forging vast psychedelic and naturalistic spaces and densely organized information simultaneously. As the artist’s first exhibition since becoming a father, Roberts’ recent paintings are made in complete balance with the caretaking and flourishing of his young son. Much like the artist’s biblical reference, Roberts has taken to referencing past notes and diagrams diligently scrawled during past psychedelic explorations. These records serve as a vital roadmap–a means to synthesize and tap into the vast collective unconsciousness that serves as the basis for the paintings within The Gopherwoods. 

As any parent can attest to, the process of childcare is absorbed and reflected within all things. Even the simple act of walking around the artist’s Mission District neighborhood with Roberts’ son in a baby carrier has become a vital source of inspiration. The artist notes a particular interest in how the passage of time imprints itself upon the area’s pervasive murals. Expounding upon this phenomenon, Roberts imbued his paintings with texture, both adding and scraping away, sculpting on the flat plane with such untraditional materials as pumice and then layering over with acrylic paints–simultaneously adding depth and obfuscating. Within Piranesi’s Prison, a technicolor mash up of color, surface, pattern and space are collided with a profound density that belies the work’s modest scale. Referencing the 18th century Italian artist’s mindbending imaginary prisons, Roberts crafts a space that echoes the countless paths and portals of Piranesi, while replacing the dank darkness of the late artist’s work with an expansive saturated exuberance. Patches of texture are built up with additions of sandy pumice, with these low reliefs themselves becoming decorated and enmeshed within the larger picture plane. These imaginary spaces are balanced with paintings of redwood and fern laden forests. En Plein Air 5 features a celestial clearing through which a sublime ball of light radiates, which is contrasted by a densely wooded forest within En Plein Air 4, superimposed with vague line drawings that make up figures, faces and eyes–providing a link from the natural world to the more surreal psychedelia of Roberts’ other work.

Time and our sense of it becomes an incredibly malleable and relative structure as we fall in and out of sleep deprivation while caring for a being which relies on our every action, as any recent parent can relate. Similarly, time within Roberts’ works becomes an infinitely flexible framework through which we understand the work. The notion of time is manifested in the artist’s collage works: New Club Section 12 and New Club Section 13–a duo which have been in progress for the past decade and feature a mixture of original drawings and scrawlings interspersed with found imagery, stickers and assorted paraphernalia, all harvested over a decade’s worth of walks. These collages are contrasted by Smokey Earth, a painting featuring acrylic and mixed media that resembles an ancient cave painting, a warm sandy surface populated by rudimentary forms and sculptural heads of humanoid and extraterrestrial figures. The Gopherwoods as an exhibition in essence is an exploration of time, of time travelling, of being rooted in the moment while simultaneously straddling the future and past, all seen through the consciousness unifying yet entirely idiosyncratic vision of Joe Roberts.

Joe Roberts (b. 1976, Madison, WI) was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Roberts studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. His works are manifestations of psychedelia. Exploring themes of pop culture, nature, and extraterrestrial life, his works transport viewers into a mind-bending universe. Selected solo presentations include Slow Culture, Los Angeles; Marlborough, New York City; Capital, San Francisco. His work was in group shows at The Luggage Store, San Francisco; SHRINE, New York City; MASH Gallery, Los Angeles; Galerie Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm, Sweden; and SITUATIONS, New York City. This is his second show with the gallery. Roberts lives and works in San Francisco, CA.