Biography

Les Joynes, (American, b, 1963) excavates and resurrects images and places them into paintings, sculptures and photographs. His work offers subtle suggestions of mythical locations and glimpses of forms that hover on the verge of definition, confident of their location and often just outside of representation. These paintings evoke a sense of immediacy and establish a relationship between the experiences of viewing and of painting.

For Joynes painting enables encounters with an inner world that comes to life in the creation and viewing of a work of art. Existing at the edge of consciousness and form this middle world is complex, multi-layered and fluid, as it touches on transient forms: mountains, planetary bodies, cave-dwellings, mythological creatures and piles of debris. His paintings incorporate an uncompromising yet individual approach to the history of painting. With an immediacy of brushstroke he draws on his unique sensibilities to excavating form, texture, color, and technique where – he layers, superimposes and buries images and forms until their reading tensely peers into abstraction.

Les Joynes was born in Southern California. He studied fine art at Central Saint Martins College of Art, London and completed an M.A. Fine Art at Goldsmiths College London in 1997. He is presently researching entropy and formlessness in contemporary art on the doctoral program at Leeds School of Contemporary Art in the UK.

His work has been included in numerous exhibitions including Sandra Bürgel Gallery, Berlin; Nylon Gallery, London; Barbican Concourse Gallery; ArtSee, New York; London; Mizuma Gallery, Tokyo; The Art Center/Art and Culture Foundation, Seoul; Romo Gallery, Atlanta; Alliance Francaise, Bangkok; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; and Maejima Art Center/AIT Tactical Museum, Japan.