Jwan Josef

Jwan Yosef

Jwan Yosef is an artist whose work moves between formal abstraction and autobiographical inquiry. Across painting, sculpture and installation, he explores identity, belonging, intimacy and the unstable spaces between seemingly opposing states.

Central to Yosef’s practice is a sustained investigation of material and perception. He deliberately brings together substances associated with different cultural and economic values, applying oil paint, traditionally connected to fine art, to acrylic glass and other materials commonly used in construction and industrial production. Through these contrasts, he questions distinctions between the authentic and the synthetic, exposure and concealment, permanence and fragility.

Stretching, scraping, layering and touch are recurring elements within Yosef’s visual language. His works often appear formally restrained, yet remain charged with personal, bodily and political associations. Their apparent simplicity reveals a deeper tension between seduction and resistance, proximity and distance.

Yosef’s practice examines how materials carry meaning, and how the body, the image and personal experience intersect.

Image: Jwan Yosef portrait. Courtesy of the artist.

Seven Limited-Edition Works

Henzel Studio’s collaboration with Jwan Yosef comprises seven limited-edition textile works: three hand-knotted carpets and four chromogenic works printed on velour.

The hand-knotted works, Masking, 2018, Duct, 2019, and Electrical, 2019, originate in Yosef’s engagement with adhesive tape as both a physical material and a sculptural image. Translated into silk, the overlapping strips become free-form compositions articulated through variable pile heights, contrasting material finishes and carefully constructed elevations.

Rather than treating the designs as flat images, Yosef approached them as three-dimensional imitations of real objects. Raised intersections reproduce the physical proportions of overlapping tape, while shifts in pile and material composition create depth, shadow and a layered architectural presence.

“In a way, I don’t really consider this carpet as two-dimensional. I worked with masking tape as a reference and the carpet became a pretty accurate three-dimensional imitation of that real object. The elevations of the crossing pieces of ‘tape’ are pretty real in proportions. I wanted to superimpose the idea of an adhesive object. To somehow tie in a room and its contents together through the image of a strip of masking tape.”
— Jwan Yosef

The collaboration later expanded through the Intimacies capsule, comprising four chromogenic works printed on velour: Builder (01), 2011, Builder (02), 2011, Head (01), 2012, and Head (02), 2012.

These works translate Yosef’s paintings into tactile textile surfaces, relocating painterly gesture from canvas to a material encountered physically within space. Marks created through stretching, scraping and touch retain the immediacy of the original works while acquiring a new relationship to scale, architecture and the body.

Produced within the Henzel Studio Collaborations programme and as part of The Dual Terrains collection, the four works may function as either carpets or textile wall pieces for indoor and outdoor environments. The capsule was launched at CultureEdit Gallery in Los Angeles.

Together, the seven works transform Yosef’s investigations of material, intimacy and duality into textile objects that operate between painting, sculpture and spatial intervention.

Image: JWAN YOSE, Electrical, 2019 (in-situ)