The New York–based artist Joel Holmberg (b. 1982, Bethesda, Maryland) is trained as a sculptor but works in a variety of formats, including analog and digital media. He approaches the Internet with an artist’s sensitivity and a hyperawareness of the ironies, absurdities, and paradoxes it often fosters. Though his tongue-in-cheek works often have an air of merry prankster–ism about them, they also seem to stem from an underlying sincerity, a quest to capture and highlight the human aspects of (as he terms it) “corporatized” digital mediums. He is a member of the web-based collective Nasty Nets.
Holmberg received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (2005) and his MFA from Yale University (2013). He has had solo exhibitions at American Contemporary, New York (2014 and 2013), Harmony Murphy Gallery, Los Angeles (2014), Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn (2014), NADA, Miami Beach (2013), Outpost, Norwich, England (2012), and PMgalerie, Berlin (2011). He has participated in group exhibitions at Foxy Production, New York (2014), American Contemporary, New York (2014 and 2013), Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2014), So What Space, Brooklyn (2013), Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, England (2013), the Museum of the Moving Image, New York (2012), the 9th Shanghai Biennale (2012), W139, Amsterdam (2011), the New Museum, New York (2010), Detour, Vienna (2010), Townhouse Gallery, Cairo (2010), Art Dubai (2010), Espace multimédia gantner, Belfort, France (2010), Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst, Amsterdam (2009), 3rd Fotofestival, Mannheim, Germany (2009), Sculpture Park, Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin (2009), the Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah (2009), the New York Underground Film Festival (2008), Rhizome.org, New York (2007), and Eyebeam, New York (2005).
