2018
Oil On Canvas
36 x 24 in
Joel Ray / Nvr Connected
Comes  with Hahnemuhle Certificate of Authenticity Serialized Hologram Protection System
 
Joel Ray’s “Used Car Salesman”is a bravura piece of contemporary American grotesque, equal parts Philip Guston, George Condo, and back lot carnival barker.
The painting presents a single, larger-than life figure rendered in a thick, almost sculptural impasto that gives the skin a greasy, sun-damaged heft. The salesman’s face is a masterclass in calculated sleaze, a bulbous, liverish nose dominates the center, flanked by black wrap-around sunglasses that reflect nothing and reveal even less. His grin is all teeth painted in a sickly peach that seems to ooze rather than sit on the canvas. 
The color palette is deliberately lurid yet sophisticated: nicotine yellows, motel sign oranges, and a queasy institutional green fight for dominance beneath a bruised violet sky. Ray drags and scumbles these hues with the brush , creating a surface that feels both slick and abraded, like cheap vinyl left too long in the sun. 
Compositionally, the figure crowds the canvas with claustrophobic insistence; there is nowhere for the viewer to escape his pitch. The shoulders are wrapped in a plaid sports coat the color of spoiled mustard, its lapels so wide they threaten to slide off the edges of the painting entirely. One meaty hand clutches an unseen set of keys or perhaps a rolled-up contract (the gesture is ambiguous and therefore menacing).
This is not caricature for its own sake. Beneath the broad comedy lies a sharp, almost moral outrage at the American religion of the hard sell. Ray paints the salesman as both clown and minor demon, a figure who has sold so many dreams he no longer distinguishes them from lies. The painting’s emotional register swings from hilarity to unease in the space of a single brushstroke a hallmark of some of Ray’s best work.
Used Car Salesman* is among the most psychologically loaded and visually aggressive of the suit and tie collection making it a cornerstone for any serious collection of postwar American figuration or contemporary satirical painting.
A rare, loud, and unforgettable picture it doesn’t hang on a wall so much as it corners you against one. 
 
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