Joe Finch began as a photographer, training the analog craft of light, colors and composition. Over time, he started experiments with image manipulation softwares, developing an intimate relationship with the digital brush. His unconstrained flow soon led him to a provocative practice: photographing objects and meticulously inserting them into canonical works of art and Old Master’s paintings to pervert the original meaning, blurring the lines between past and present with obsessive precision. The result is a seamless blend, as if his interventions had always belonged.
Finch’s work is subversive yet reverent, forging new meanings from familiar classics. Those re-imaginations have sparked both outrage and fascination, challenging viewers to reconsider the original’s context. His interventions create a liminal space where historic materialism collides with contemporary tools and elements, leaving the audience unable to unsee his additions.
Finch’s work resists complacency. His practice echoes broad artistic and philosophical dialogues. The Gilles Deleuze theory on the art-history’s ‘toolkit’ meets the method with precision. On perception it resonates with Ranciere’s pensive moment, not commanding guilt nor permitting passive consumption. On reinterpretation, it exposes how our perceived realities are constructed.
As NUMÉRO observed, “Most of the time, Finch's adaptations are so delicate that you need to look twice… Modesty, after all, is a form of power.”
