Eric Joyner has complied nearly twenty years of paintings depicting battery powered, mechanized raiders and roughnecks and doughy fat saturated death rings. Mr Joyner's work show robots as icons of modern culture that have insinuated themselves into the most integral parts of our cultural consciousness. Recalling the genesis of his obsession with automatons Eric Joyner explains, “Back when I was in art school I used to go to these fair grounds about once or twice a year, and they’d have theses toy shows, that’s when I found all these tin toys…. I thought the people who would buy theses toys would buy my prints I really never expected it to be a big deal.” People did buy his prints, but they also bought into Joyner's preoccupation with tin toys. The toy robots at the fair ground were those mass manufactured in Japan following the countries reconstruction after WWII.
They are heavy pieces, of which Eric has hundreds and each model has its own personality. The robots in the world of Eric Joyner mimic us, becoming our illegitimate subconscious offspring. One of Mr. Joyner’s more arresting paintings depicts the conclusion of the famous fight between Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali, with Ali and Liston are replaced by those paragons of conflict the Rockem’ Sockem’ Robots. There is a diptych which depicts Eric’s star-bot Sparky hung by the neck from a rope tied to the roof of a cathedral. Some the images are fantastic, some are haunting , all are honest.
Joyner embraces the humanity of his automatons, the part of them that makes for good Issac Asimov stories and bad Will Smith movies. Sometimes they are contemplative sitting under willow trees or terrified by a cosmic incursion of marauding donuts “First I thought, 'Where would these robots be?' so I put them in space, so then I thought 'Where wouldn’t they be?' so I put them in bars, then I thought they needed a nemesis: donuts!" Eric’s logic has a seamless way about it, a mechanized rationale that revolves around these tin toys.
Sparky stands out from the dozens of tin faces, “I think [Sparky’s] Original name was Hiru. He has a lot of emotion, you know with those bulging eyes. He’s perfect for running away from donuts.” Sparky is attention addict to whom Eric rewards with a lot of canvass time. The paintings with Sparky are full of sexually aroused robots and machines that build other machines. A lot of questions are raised by Eric’s choice of subject and evocative imagery, questions concerning how we see ourselves in the design of things we build to help up us, to defend us from ourselves and to remind us of how to be people. Eric’s recent popularity in the film industry and in themed gallery circulation is due to his ability to articulate humanity though his paintings. Written and directed by Greg Grunberg Group Sex, a film about sexual addiction and advertising, will feature a cameo by Eric Joyner and his paintings. In San Jose his work is on display as part of ‘Robots: Evolution of an Icon’ at the San Jose museum of the arts. People are reacting to the humanity of Eric’s figures, Eric responds to the world that manufactures his subjects “I’ve been to the big comic conventions,” he said “you're always sitting at the you booth and your so excited to see someone…anyone.” Eric likes to have his work showcased to see how people react to humanity depicted in an automatic form. Some people look and can’t help themselves from smiling, others just let their eyes walk through the a world of painted man made of gears, pistons, and shafts and tin, driving suped up model T’s through Italian Villas and Tuscan roads drifting into something like nostalgia.
“I used to like Rockwell’s work. I admit it. I never really thought about it. I don’t think I paint like him”, Eric says commenting on how Americana has influenced his work. Like Rockwell, Joyner imagines a certain America but he takes that image into the stratosphere, the universes, and the boxing Ring. “I try to make a lot less sense than [Rockwell],” Joyner asserts and it is a goal worth having. The world of tin toys in bar fights, worker-bots addicted to the sweet sugary goodness of fried bread, a place where the sinister congealing saucers taunt and terrify tin toys.
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