Joel Richardson
is a contemporary Canadian artist whose artistic career spans well over twenty years. His extensive body of art includes large-scale installations, sculptures, murals, portraits, art performances and digital and video projections. His early work demonstrated a fascination with the fusing of extremes in ideas and techniques, all of this in an attempt to expand traditional portraiture into the realm of social documentation. By the turn of the millennium Richardson’s work had become truly multidisciplinary, with the intent of dominating the spaces they occupied. Richardson’s work has been informed by his interest in how false representation shapes our truth – what is sanctified, what is profound -- and the intersection of these representations. The complex relationship between the sacred and untrue is at the core of his practice. Richardson became widely known for his controversial clash with Toronto's Mayor, Rob Ford after Ford erased his 150-meter-long mural: “An Equation of Suitman” composed of individuals in business attire interspersed with the extensive Black-Scholes equation (a commentary on the manipulation of the stock markets). Ironically, this work was commissioned by the City of Toronto. Although the work was ‘wiped’ in Toronto where it was commissioned, it received global acclaim that translated into further shows in New York, Miami, Moscow and Toronto. Richardson is an award-winning member of the Director’s Guild of Canada.
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