“WHAT BETTER WAY to start talking about this artist and his work than to see him standing in front of his painting of his family.“
– Doris Palca
Family and friends have always been the focus of Fioretti’s work. Is it because they are available or because it is a challenge to represent them with understanding and sympathy? Family members appear and reappear with continuing skill and a confidence that makes us see them differently. Portrayed realistically, the sitters occupy space, they are part of their context. Their attitudes and belongings stimulate the artist. Sometimes it is a ring, a mirror, a shower, eyeglasses that make us look twice and wonder why.
Our artist has also moved beyond his own environment into the street, sometimes through a window, sometimes at ground level. In an early interview the artist said, “Sometimes I dream ideas.” If his interiors are full of secrets his exteriors seem more surreal and dreamlike. How else to understand the bundle of rags in a doorway that turns into a body with belongings strewn about.
Here reality is married to imagination, technique, and surprise. How to make the facade of a neighborhood building as compelling as his portraits. What about a daring combination of interior and exterior? How curious to see a fire escape cutting its way across the background of a beautiful young woman? Or Lee, whose reflection is on the same plane as the curtain floating in the open window.
What Fioretti’s pictures tell us is that he keeps thinking, dreaming, evolving. The skill of his hand and the use of new tools have developed along with his need to represent both the world around him and reach into his subconscious.
Joey wears a hat in a recent self-portrait. My hat is in the air as a salute to the power of these pictures.
– Doris Palca
Joey's paintings are bereavingly beautiful to me, even the ones that shock or disturb. I’m always overwhelmed by how his paintings breathe into the room, so alive to me, I never forget them, nor would I want to. He paints with the eyes of a poet and the hands of a thief who steals from no one, he never falls off the tightrope he's strung up for himself. I want to live long enough to be painted by Fioretti.
— Sam Kashner / Writer -at-Large
As painters, singers, filmmakers, actors, dancers, who have used our art in the service of sustaining freedom and justice in decades past, we must come to terms with the fact that we have never faced a challenge so grave and a time so dangerous, as the one in which we are presently living.
Bravo to Joe and all who are supporting this effort. My hope is that this exhibition, a huge personal commitment on Joe’s part, to Ukraine’s defense of itself, and to nothing less than its continued existence – will inspire others from all walks of life who might otherwise say, “What can I do? I’m one person.”
Each of us is only one artist, only one person. And each of us holds the fate of the world in our hands.
— Peter Yarrow / Musician, Activist
I have been fortunate enough to know Joey for over fifty years. In that time, he has proven himself to be an accomplished ballet dancer and performer, a successful producer, gifted artist, loyal friend, and pasta-maker extraordinaire!
I could not be prouder of the creativity and dedication of his new artwork and his generous support of the people of Ukraine.— MICHAEL DOUGLAS
“If you like it, and you can afford it, buy it”.
That was the guidance given to me at 21 years of age by Walter Brimson, my first wife’s grandfather. Back in the days when I knew him, he was head of the largest independent bank west of the Mississippi.
Walter Brimson had a great art collection, it was something to be admired, and I aspired to…well, if nothing else…to get started in a life-long hobby of collecting art. His counsel was solicited.
“If you like it, and you can afford it, buy it”.
Fioretti’s art more than falls into that category, for not only do I like his work, so does Sharon Gless, my spouse of over thirty years. In fact, regarding his latest series of urban landscapes we actually love them.
“If you like it, and you can afford it, buy it.” Turns out you can get into some trouble with that kind of advice, but it is “good trouble.” Keep painting, Joey, there are empty walls everywhere.
— BARNEY ROSENZWEIG
From the moment a man named Fioretti walked into my class at the Art Students League of New York, it has been a learning experience for both of us. It has been an honor to know him as a human being as well as an artist.
”It is only when what can be taught is working in perfect harmony with what cannot be taught that a work of art results.” Harold Speed, 1873.
A truly great work of art expresses something that cannot be described in words. Fioretti’s images must be seen.
As you turn the pages of this book be prepared to be surprised. Each is startling. Some are shocking. The Self-portraits are soul searching. The portraits are honest and caring. The still lives are elegant. All are unforgettable. Fioretti has the eye of true artist.
— Sherry Camhy
Joe entered my late afternoon Class at the Art Students League of New York, recommended by the master artist Sigmund Abeles who recognized Joe's enormous potential. Initially, Joe was restless and dissatisfied observing and drawing the posed model, but he quickly settled into a focused and relentless search for the model's soul. Never content to achieve a technical rendering of a figure, a city scene or a vase of sunflowers, Joe is a creative thinker and has always been most interested in producing a narrative within each piece. He uses preliminary drawings as studies to help him previsualize his concepts, and then devotes many hours of total immersion to capture the essence of his subjects.
— Wendy Shalen