The exhibited works in Jwan Yosef’s Object / Object are no redundancy. A selfdescribed conceptual painter, Yosef’s works are attentive to the formal values that physically shape a work of art, yet more readily discourses the language constructs inherent to the social and psychological processes of projecting and interpreting objects. In the case of Object / Object, Yosef invites us to examine the dimensionality of the ubiquitous term’s many façades and functions—from the anonymity of its description as a noun to its performance as a radically actionoriented verb. Mirroring the transitory states of this word unfolds Yosef’s Object series. The objects here hold no singular identity. At once painting and sculpture, the works subtly introduce a limbo of being. While the pulling action of the artist’s hand can be interpreted as an iconoclastic or even violent maneuver, the gesture is performed as a revelatory exercise, which Yosef describes as an “undressing of the canvas.” The canvas’ cor oreality reveals its naked anatomy, expressing a most sensual disrobing. With the painting’s interior elements bared, grids of threaded linen are exposed, and the limbs of the stretcher bars posture a new relaxed silhouette. The façade of the canvas, fortified with gesso and white paint, holds a sculptural form reminiscent of the folds of wet drapery carved in Greco-Roman frieze figures. The undressing gesture transforms the painting into sculpture or an entity existing in-between. This transfigurative quality of the Object series engenders allegorical poetics to each painting’s essence—as an objection, as an objectification, as an art object. Each iteration examines mark-making manifested in folding, tucking, pulling, concealing, and preserving the visual planes—indexing the artist’s hand in grappling meaning within the lexicons of minimalism, to ultimately dialogue the power dynamics that instigate objectification. Curated by Joakim Andreasson.

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