Joe Lupo's exhibition "Chronic Uncertainty."
WVU School of Art and Design Associate Director and Professor of Printmaking Joseph Lupo’s exhibition “Chronic Uncertainty” is on display in the Annex Gallery at the Concept Art Gallery in Pittsburgh now through April 4.
“Chronic Uncertainty” is an extension of Lupo’s previous series of prints “This Doesn’t Make Any Sense.” Both use graphics from public-domain comics, layering picture and text elements to create chaotic but cohesive images that simultaneously rely on the viewer’s understanding of comics’ visual language while subverting the viewer’s expectations.
“This Doesn’t Make Any Sense” primarily relied on question marks (standing alone or inside speech bubbles) and characters’ expressions of shock, alarm or confusion.
“I have a digital archive of comic books from the public domain, and I started to go through that archive and find examples of people only communicating through the question mark. So they look confused, they're exacerbated and they are only talking through a question mark,” said Lupo.
“Then I would isolate them,” he continued, “so there’s nothing to tell you what they’re confused about. I wanted to express that layered exacerbation, that buildup of confusion in a way that felt chaotic and confusing but was still visually appealing.”
From there, Lupo collaged the images digitally, experimenting with color and composition, setting up the characters from a variety of comics to look at each in confusion or to stare “off-camera” in confoundment.
“Chronic Uncertainty” borrows some of those same core images but adds the visual language of falling and impact: figures tumbling through the air and “crash!” in large, graphic letters.
The two collections together represent the turmoil—globally, politically, economically
and personally—of the last 15 years, Lupo said.
Joe Lupo's exhibition "Chronic Uncertainty." Some of the prints included in this show came from the collection "This Doesn't Make Any Sense."
The catalyst for “Chronic Uncertainty” was an invitation from Jenny Robinson, of Jenny Robinson Print Studio in Sydney, Australia, to create an edition of variable prints for a portfolio she was showing at the Sydney Contemporary Art Fair in summer 2025.
Lupo had met Robinson the summer of 2024 when he was a visiting artist-in-residence at her studio. They had kept in contact after his return from Sydney, and he was thrilled when she invited him to create a print edition for her show.
“I had this opportunity to make something new, but I wanted it to be related to ‘This Doesn’t Make Any Sense,’ because things hadn’t really changed,” Lupo said.
“I was going through my digital comic archive, and I was looking at a lot of war and crime comics. I noticed the repetition of people falling, and I started to think about these people tripping or losing their footing or having the rug pulled out from under them. It felt like a visual metaphor for feeling uneasy,” he continued.
The falling figures became the variant in his variable edition; the one thing that changed among the 16 prints in the collection.
“These images were intended to be entertaining or comical, but now they’re used to reflect broader themes of uncertainty, hubris and the fragility of stability,” said Lupo.
For the background, he wanted to create something chaotic but predictable, using the layered images to evoke uneasiness and uncertainty but keep the prints cohesive. He borrowed some of the confused figures from “This Doesn’t Make Any Sense” and added new graphic language to evoke the impact of a fall.
“People crash, things crash, markets crash,” said Lupo, “so the ‘crash!’ was a standard comic text I could use to imply multiple things.” To make the actual prints, Lupo used the CMYK technique, in which color registration is broken down into four primary components—cyan, magenta, yellow and black—and layered to create 50 to 60 colors. He started with the falling figures, each one unique to each print and the most complex element in terms of color.
Once each figure was complete, Lupo would cover it with a laser-cut stencil and add the standardized background elements one color layer at a time.
It took Lupo roughly three weeks of printing to create the 16-image collection for Robinson’s portfolio. As is often the case in printmaking, Lupo created multiple copies of each unique image, which has allowed the same prints to be displaced in multiple places at once.
Joe Lupo's exhibition "Chronic Uncertainty." Some of the prints included in this show came from the collection "This Doesn't Make Any Sense."
Twelve of those 16 prints are now on display in the Annex Gallery, alongside four prints from “This Doesn’t Make Any Sense.” One of the prints from “Chronic Uncertainty” will also be on display during the Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair April 9-12.
“Most of my work is based in my interest in comics,” said Lupo. “I grew up reading comics and never stopped. ‘This Doesn’t Make Any Sense’ and ‘Chronic Uncertainty’ are the most personal my work has ever gotten. They’re almost like self-portraits without me actually being in the work.”
The phrase “Chronic Uncertainty” came from a faculty speech to the WVU Board of Governors in 2024 when the university was undergoing a period of budget, program and personnel changes. This was more than a year before Lupo was asked to create a variable edition for the Sydney Contemporary Art Fair. The term resonated with him so much he wrote it down in the moment, and as this collection took form, it became the obvious choice for a title.
The Concept Art Gallery in Pittsburgh is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Lupo’s exhibition will be on display through April 4. Learn more about Lupo’s work at https://www.josephlupo-portfolio.com and about the School of Art and Design at artanddesign.wvu.edu.