JOEY TEPEDINO: A BATCH OF DRAWINGS REVEALS ANOTHER SIDE OF AN IRREPRESSIBLE SPIRIT

AT A RECENT GALLERY EXHIBITION OF HIS NEWEST PAINTINGS, THE ARTIST’S SMALL WORKS ON PAPER OFFERED UNEXPECTED SURPRISES

Published on April 3, 2025

by Edward M. Gómez

NEW YORK — A few weeks ago, the photographer Bill Westmoreland (brutjournal’s visual director) and I slipped into Hal Bromm Gallery to see an exhibition of the Pennsylvania-based artist Joey Tepedino’s most recent paintings. (Instagram: @joeytepedinoart)

We had first discovered Tepedino’s vibrant tableaux in the autumn of 2023 on the occasion of his debut exhibition at this same venue in downtown Manhattan’s TriBeCa district. (In fact, that presentation was the first-ever gallery showing anywhere of his work.)

The artist Joey Tepedino’s most recent solo exhibition, “Why Does My Dog Stare at Me?,” was presented at Hal Bromm Gallery in New York from February 1 through March 21, 2025. Photo for brutjournal by Bill Westmoreland

Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that his paintings demanded that we notice them with more than just a passing glance. That’s because there’s a grab-you-by-the-collar, jump-off-the-walls energy pulsing through many of Tepedino’s somewhat frenetic compositions that pulls viewers in for close inspection. Resistance, apparently, is futile.

So it was that, this time at Hal Bromm, we were drawn to Tepedino’s mixed-media-on-canvas painting “BALLSAK” (2024), with its big, red blob (shaped like a cartoon bomb) inscribed with an abundance of random patterns and graffiti-like scribbles, and to “Job 4 sale” (2024), another mixed-media work on canvas featuring a sparely outlined, bespectacled head seen with Cubist dexterity simultaneously in profile and head on; it’s surrounded by a sea of colored-pattern jottings, including scattered words and phrases. In such pictures, is Tepedino making visible the flotsam and jetsam of a restless spirit or a hyperactive mind?

Joey Tepedino, “BALLSAK,” 2024, mixed media on canvas, 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 centimeters). Photo courtesy of Hal Bromm Gallery

This recent exhibition of the artist’s latest productions included a few drawings; a binder containing an additional selection of his works on paper was also available for visitors to peruse. In it, we found some unexpected smaller works that felt quieter or perhaps meditative in a way that differed from the spirit of Tepedino’s more densely packed, painted compositions.

In one of these black-and-white drawings (“Untitled 4”, 2024), a droopy, distorted face with a displaced mouth filled with big, menacing teeth floats against an empty white background. In another (“Untitled 2”, 2024), a cascade of odd faces and creepy-crawler forms flows down the right-hand side of the artist’s paper. In many of these monochromatic compositions — “Untitled,” 2024, is a good example — the play of Tedpedino’s thinner and thicker outlines imbues his images with a sense of rhythm and movement that is more clearly articulated than it is in his paintings.

Joey Tepedino, “Untitled 4,” 2024, mixed media on paper, 12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 22.9 centimeters). Photo courtesy of Hal Bromm Gallery

In fact, Tepedino, who lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia, told us, “I started making drawings way before I started painting. My paintings are extensions of my drawings. My drawings and paintings are completely separate. I view everything I do as a one-off.”

The Pennsylvania-based artist Joey Tepedino at his last exhibition at Hal Bromm Gallery, New York, September 2023. Photo by Bill Westmoreland

He does not plan his compositions prior to starting work on each new drawing or painting. Instead, he explained, “Each one is completely spontaneous, just like I live my life. [I believe that] everything should happen moment to moment, otherwise, who cares? Everything I do starts when I start it and ends when I end it.”

We liked the sound of such a decisive approach to confronting the Muses.

Joey Tepedino, “Untitled 2,” 2024, mixed media on paper, 12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 22.9 centimeters). Photo courtesy of Hal Bromm Gallery

Tepedino added, “Life inspires my paintings. What I’m going through at that exact moment [when I’m making art] inspires me — the pain and the humor of the moment.”

As for the artist’s preferred materials for making his artworks, he pointed out, “I use whatever is around — pens, markers, blood, etcetera.”

Forget about the specific meanings of Tepedino’s creations. Very generously and democratically, this impulsive art-maker suggests that the meaning of whatever he produces is up for grabs.

Joey Tepedino, “Jon 4 sale,” 2024, mixed media on canvas, 16 x 12 inches (40.6 x 30.5 centimeters). Photo courtesy of Hal Bromm Gallery

He observed, “I know art is subjective, and that a lot of people spend time refining their craft, and I think those people are beautiful, but I also think there is an expression with art that isn’t talked about and that’s what I do. I express myself in the moment. If I paint a painting on Thursday, it’s going to be different than if I were to wait until Friday, and that’s what I love about it.”

Tepedino noted that, at least for him, making any work of art “captures a moment in time that can’t be reproduced; it’s [something] singular, caught in time, that will never be seen again, like a photo or a facial expression.”

Go ahead, grab us by the collar!

[Scroll down to see more artworks by Joey Tepedino.]