CHANTAL JOFFE: THE PRINCE
THE PRINCE – NEW PAINTINGS BY CHANTAL JOFFE
Renowned for her bold and expressive approach to figurative painting, Chantal Joffe RA combines intuition and insight with psychological depth. Defined by clarity, honesty and empathy, her work explores the relationship between subject and observer, capturing the complexities of human presence. Questioning and emotionally rich, her self-portraits and paintings, often of those closest to her, are candid and unflinching. With a keen eye and expressive brushstroke, Joffe paints a person as they are in the moment, acknowledging that a portrait can only ever capture a glimpse of a person’s life.
The Prince includes two major new bodies of work. The first series of four large-scale paintings shows Joffe’s partner, Richard. The second series depicts the writer Charlie Porter in the immediate aftermath of the death of both his parents. Porter had begun to make his own clothes, and these paintings are a serious, loving investigation of grief and loss, and in particular the ways in which clothes can both communicate emotion and provide protection.
These two series are accompanied by smaller portraits that explore masculinity as a fluid state, full of possibilities of tenderness and change.
The exhibition’s title, The Prince, comes from conversations with the writer Olivia Laing, whose essay of the same name accompanies the exhibition.
