Joe Becker cites Baroque and Rococo painting as primary influences on his work, but the specters of more recent artists — Francis Bacon and Ivan Albright most prominently — also peer out from his grotesque images. Becker levels less-than-subtle indictments of man’s gluttony, violence, cruelty, and selfishness through his paintings, and while rarely using contemporary imagery, his commentary applies particularly to the current state of our civilization and the persistent human sense of entitlement. The wrath behind the snarling mouths and beneath the rot, decay, blood, and viscera of Becker’s pieces is almost tangible.

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