Joe Coleman is a world-renowned painter, writer and performer who has exhibited for four decades in major museums throughout the world including one-man exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, the Barbican Centre in London, Tilton Gallery and Dickinson Gallery in New York. He was featured in the "Unrealism" show in Miami presented by Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian. His first exhibition in New York in almost a decade, Joe Coleman & the Shadow Self takes place at Andrew Edlin Gallery Oct 25-Dec 7 2019/

His performance work from the 1980's was some of the most radical of its time, and can be seen in the films Mondo New York (1988) and Captured (2008). The book on extreme performance, Avant Garde from Below: Transgressive Performance from Iggy Pop to Joe Coleman and G.G. Allin by Clemens Marschall, explores Coleman's influence during this pivotal period.

An avid and passionate collector, Coleman's "Odditorium" is a private museum where sideshow objects, wax figures, crime artifacts and works of religious devotion live together to form a dark mirror that reflects the alternative side of the American psyche. His work has been published in numerous books, prints and records.

Joe Coleman was the subject of an award-winning feature length documentary, Rest in Pieces: A Portrait of Joe Coleman (1997). He has appeared in acting roles in films such as Asia Argento's Scarlet Diva (2000) and The Cruel Tale of the Medicine Man (2015). He lives with his wife Whitney Ward in Brooklyn, New York.

“If P.T. Barnum had hired Breughel or Bosch to paint sideshow banners they might have resembled the art of Joe Coleman."

The New York Times

"Coleman's bitter intensity and microscopic detail give his apocalyptic vision a manic power."

-- John Maizels, author of Raw Creation

“Joe Coleman... His art is something else. Praise! Praise! He’s a caveman in a spaceship!"

Charles Manson

"His pictures are as delicately made as lace and have the vivid presence of icons."

-- The Financial Times

"Like Grosz in the 1920's, he holds a drastic mirror up to his own times."

-- Berlin Tagesspiegel, 8/12/07

"Terrible things happen in Joe Coleman's paintings. Flesh rots. Sores weep. The flames of hell burn brightly. Perversion runs rampant. Things fall apart: Bodies. Cities. The whole social order. Yet there's beauty here, too: The colors dazzle, the detail astounds. And a stalwart symmetry surrounds his aberrant images, a symmetry born of both faith and fear."

-- Nancy Shulins, Associated Press