Working primarily in drawing, Joe Biel is interested in charged human situations. This interest is reflected through various means; sometimes by portraying a particular moment or event, but more often by showing the moment before or after an action which is only partially named or specified. The artist is more interested in the suggestion of narrative possibilities than in clearly resolved linear narratives. There is a constant oscillation between the imagined and the observed in Biel’s work. Often these are combined and result in a fusion of differing qualities: stoicism and vulnerability, absurd comedy and overwrought tragedy, the banal and the bizarre. A major theme running through Biel’s work is a poetic collision between beauty and the (sometimes cruel) absurdity of the contemporary world. This collision produces a variety of situations, ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime, all of which reveal a vulnerable sense of humanity.