Joseph Yaeger (b. 1986, Helena) is an artist based in London. Yaeger's paintings are characterised by his unique use of watercolour on thickly primed canvas - applying the watercolour at speed and expressively. Sourcing his imagery from film stills, his own photography, stock images and news media. Yaeger is constantly seeking to understand his attraction to a chosen image, simultaneously, in the resulting painting he seeks to displace and locate the image somewhere entirely new, a constant process of actively 'dissolving context'. As Yaeger notes "..the subject of the painting then is in many ways its act-the painting itself evidence of whatever was discovered within the image.

Yaeger is an artist attuned to the vagaries of contemporary cultural memory. His practice can be thought of as a parallel investigation in the fetishization of images in contemporary libidinal economies, and in painting’s contemporaneous agency in the transformation and circulation of the visible. The images appear at first glance immediately recognizable and equally untraceable, an uncanny déjà vu.

Yaeger received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2008) and an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2019).

Solo exhibitions include ‘Silent Treatment’, Project Native Informant, London (2023); ‘Time Weft’, The Perimeter, London (2023); ‘Just a Second’, Antenna Space, Shanghai (2022); Project Native Informant at Art Basel Miami Beach (2021); ‘Doublespeak’, Project Native Informant, London (2021); ‘The Writer’, Project Native Informant, London (2020); ‘Power Ballads’, V.O Curations, London (2020). His works have featured in group exhibitions at Hauser and Wirth, Somerset (2024); K11, Shanghai (2023); Champ Lacombe, Biarritz (2023); Project Native Informant, London (2023); Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); David Lewis, New York (2022); The Perimeter, London (2022); Project Native Informant at Frieze LA, Los Angeles (2022), Project Native Informant at Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami (2020); Mamoth Contemporary, London (2020); Eccleston Project Space, London (2019); Gerald Moore Gallery, London (2019); The Fitzrovia Gallery, London (2019); Courtyard Gallery, London (2019); Hockney Gallery, London (2018).

Yaeger’s works are held in the collection of the Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker.

Joseph Yaeger is represented by Modern Art.