It is difficult

to get the news from poems

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there …


William Carlos Willams

Goff + Rosenthal is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in New York of Los Angeles-based artist Joe Biel. The exhibition comprises five large-scale drawings, eight smaller drawings, and single wall drawing made over a period of five days.


In his spare, humorous and dark depictions of children in fantastic and disturbing settings Biel’s images leave a strong visual and psychological mark. In all of the imagery in this exhibition, children or child-like figures take on adult roles or engage in the power roles of an adult world. They can seem menacing or controlling but their degree of power is always tentative, slightly ridiculous and possibly more dangerous because of this. The images can be both grandiose and obscene.