CHANTAL JOFFE Chantal Joffe (Born 1969) Is an English Artist Based In
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‘PINK PALACE’ (2001) 91 x 304 cm - 35 7/8 x 119 5/8 in. oil and paper collage on board signed and dated on the reverse CHANTAL JOFFE Chantal Joffe (born 1969) is an English artist based in London. Her often large-scale paintings generally depict women and children. In 2006, she received the prestigious Charles Wollaston Award from the Royal Academy. Joffe has exhibited nationally and internationally at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York (2009); University of the Arts, London (2007), MIMA Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (2007), Royal Academy of Arts, London (2005), Galleri KB, Oslo (2005) and Bloomberg Space, London (2004). Possessing a humorous eye for everyday awkwardness and an enlivening facility with paint, Chantal Joffe brings a combination of insight and integrity to the genre of figurative art. Hers is a deceptively casual brushstroke. Whether in images a few inches square or ten feet high, fluidity combined with a pragmatic approach to representation seduces and disarms simultaneously. Almost always depicting women or girls, sometimes in groups but recently in iconic portraits, the paintings only waveringly adhere to their photographic source, instead reminding us that distortions of the brush or pencil can often make a subject seem more real. Joffe's paintings always alert us to how appearances are carefully constructed and codified, whether in a fashion magazine or the family album, and to the choreography of display. And yet there's witty neutrality in a career-spanning line-up that has given equal billing to catwalk models, porn actresses, mothers and children. Joffe questions assumptions about what makes a noble subject for art and challenges what our expectations of a feminist art might be. She ennobles the people she paints by rehabilitating the photographic image but, crucially, recognises that it is paint itself rather than attendant sociopolitical ideas that gives her paintings complexity and keeps us looking. ‘My early paintings used pornographic imagery, partly because I was interested in the politics surrounding pornography, but also because I wanted to paint nudes, and through pornography I had an endless supply of images of naked women. At the time I used to think I was bringing these women back to life. The photograph had killed their soul, and they died when the magazine was discarded. I saw my paintings as resurrecting them. Since having a child, my paintings are more personal. I wanted to convey some of that physical intensity that comes with having a baby. The anxiety and emotions are so visceral. When I went to the Royal College of Art in the early 1990s there was a lot of discussion about the end of painting. In 1996, I even featured in a group show entitled The Death of the Death of Painting, in New York. I wasn't concerned as I've always been unfashionable; it seemed natural I should pick an unfashionable medium. Of course, I was very conscious of what other artists were doing - I wasn't painting in a bubble - but it didn't alarm me. I just loved painting so much that if there was a glimmer of life in it, I would carry on doing it.’ Yvonne by Chantal Joffe (oil on board, 2009) Photograph: PR AVAILABLE WORKS Untitled (2006) Oil on board 91.5 × 305 × 6.5 cm Signed and dated ‘Chantal Joffe 2006’ on the reverse P.O.A. To enquire about the work please contact us: [email protected] ABOUT THE WORK This large painting by Chantal is typical of her expressive portraits of women and children often very large, sometimes 3 meters in length (10 feet) with works often so large that scaffolding is necessary to reach the top. In painting huge, Josse is unconcerned with stray drips and blobs of paint, old outlines and visible markings. Joffe paints with a kind of easy control – effortless without being slick. Her paintings may give an initial impression of simplicity, charm, or childishness, but "they have an unsettling quality which gives the exhibition an odd, rather menacing mood." In a 2009 interview with Stella McCartney, Joffe said, "I really love painting women. Their bodies, their clothes – it all interests me." Interview with Stella CcCartney & Chantal Joffe. .