Brooklyn-based artist Joe Bloch makes mixed-media acrylic paintings that feel like they’re built out of the city itself — part human, part architecture, part worn street surface. His work blends paint with real-world materials like cardboard, duct tape, labels, stencils, scraps, and industrial textures, letting seams, repairs, and rough construction stay visible instead of polished away.

Rather than collage for its own sake, these materials are treated like structure — armor, panels, plates, patches — the same way city walls and infrastructure get layered, taped, painted over, and worn down again. Figures, signage, industrial forms, and urban symbols show up and overlap, blurring the line between portrait and environment.

Bloch’s background in illustration and fine art come through in his bold linework and graphic control, but the paintings are worked physically — scraped, repainted, cracked, and rebuilt, until the surface feels tough, lived-in, and human. The result is work that carries grit, vulnerability, humor, and resilience all at once, like something that has survived the city rather than just depicting it.

Private studio visits for serious collectors are available by request through the contact form.