Joe Sinness (he/him) is a visual artist who creates intricate drawings and works on paper culled from detritus, flora, fauna, pornography, kitsch, and material comforts. Rendered in color pencil these still lifes take on lives of their own, pointing beyond the frame of the drawing and invoking displaced histories tied to their material referents. Specifically, Sinness sees his artwork as a chance to balance an urge for heteronormative assimilation with more authentic subversion. The work is a personal means for visualizing desire and transforming shame into dignity and pride.

Joe Sinness holds an MFA in Studio Art from the Minnesota College of Art and Design (MCAD). Sinness is also a two-time recipient of the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship (2019, 2013) and was the 2017 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board and was a 2015 Artist-In-Residence with the Fire Island Artist Residency in Cherry Grove. His artwork can be found in numerous private collections, as well as the permanent collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Macalester College, and the Tweed Museum of Art.

SELECT Exhibitions

• Love Letters, Headstone Gallery, Hudson, NY, 2024

• Pleasure Cruise, Rivalry Projects, Buffalo, NY, 2021

• Scenes, Hair + Nails, Minneapolis, MN, 2020

• Queer Forms, Katherine E. Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota West Bank, Minneapolis, MN, 2019

• Portraits, Soo Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN, 2018

• The Flowers, Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program (MAEP) Gallery, Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), Minneapolis, MN, 2017

• Collecting Art: H+N Group Show, Hair + Nails, Minneapolis, MN, 2017

• Tomorrow’s Man, University of Nevada, Reno, NV (curated by Jack Pierson) 

• Fey, Law Warschaw Gallery, Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, 2015  

• Delicate Stranger, University of Minnesota, Morris, Morris, MN, 2015  

• Plain Airs: Contemporary Realism, Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis, IN, 2015

• After Some Reflection, Gray Duck Gallery, Austin, TX, 2015  

• 18th Annual No Dead Artists, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA, 2014

• McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship Exhibition, MCAD Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, 2014