Traditional domestic objects speak to Joseph Havel’s exploration of transformative states in which objects are interchanged with ideas. His sculptures use specific everyday objects that have been altered in some way, but that ultimately live as doppelgangers of the real things. Through processes using materials such as resin, bronze, and polyurethane he imbues objects with monumental significance, exemplifying the fluid condition between meanings, associations and the histories of common materials. His sculptures are intentionally ambiguous, able to be viewed abstractly, literally or as a metaphor for human relations.
Joseph Havel was born in Minneapolis in 1954. He earned his B.F.A from the University of Minnesota and his M.F.A. from Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Havel is currently the director of the Glassell School in Houston. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1987 and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation in 1994. He was selected to participate in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and the 2001 Phoenix Triennial. His work has been shown nationally and internationally at institutions including the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; The Modern Art Museum, Forth worth; the Stedijk Museum. Amsterdam; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Kiev. In 2006, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston hosted the exhibition “Joseph Havel: A Decade of Sculpture 1996-2006.” His works are in collections at the Portland Art Museum; the Musée Arte, Roubaix, France; the Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu; the Dallas Museum of Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Havel lives and works in Houston, TX.