Joey Terrill joins diverse mediums of zine-making, performance and painting in a body of work that tenderly encompasses his intimate experiences of intersecting queer, Chicano and artistic communities. Drawing from the existing visual culture surrounding him, Terrill combines personal photographs, found pop cultural imagery and reproductions of artworks by queer predecessors to conjure utopian landscapes. While Terrill’s early work captures intimacies between friends and lovers at the start of the AIDS crisis in his characteristic flat style, his later paintings trace developments in photorealism and Conceptual art, reflecting the artist’s discursive relationship to illusionistic space.
Throughout his upbringing in Southern California, Terrill had exposure to prominent creative scenes such as Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino, Asco’s guerrilla performances, Ray Johnson’s New York correspondence school and the radically progressive Catholicism of Sister Corita Kent at Immaculate Heart College. Like many artists who came of age in the wake of Pop art, Terrill found refuge within the fantasies of American image culture—his earliest artworks covering his bedroom walls, which he transformed with a mix of drawings, photographs and clippings of comic books, film starlets and music icons. The artist combines his concentrated background in art and local activism, bringing a popular graphic style to depictions of queer longing and Chicano culture.
Recognized for his enduring AIDS activism, Terrill served as the Director of Global Advocacy and Partnerships for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation until recently. His work has been featured in the institutional surveys Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; ESTAMOS BIEN–La Trienal 20/21, El Museo Del Barrio, New York; Touching History: Stonewall 50, Palm Springs Art Museum; and Through Positive Eyes, Fowler Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. His work is in the permanent collections of MoMA, New York; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and Art Institute of Chicago. Joey Terrill Still Here, the first monograph devoted to his AIDS-related works, was released this next year.
[excerpted from Ortuzar Projects website: www.ortuzarprojects.com]
