CHANTAL JOFFE: THE PRINCE

Chantal Joffe, Charlie 3 - Fluffy Coat 2023

Image caption: Chantal Joffe, Charlie 3 - Fluffy Coat 2023

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.

After many years focusing on images of women and motherhood, Joffe has begun to explore the complex theme of masculinity. The Prince includes two major new bodies of work. The first series of four large-scale paintings shows Joffe’s partner, Richard, naked, engaged in traditionally domestic or feminine activities. 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.

‘What does it mean to apply the word ‘prince’ to these paintings? What kinds of masculinity does it open up, and what does it foreclose? I think it emphasises a kind of courtliness as well as a sense of changeability, potentiality, openness, germination, as opposed to the sealed contours, the definite outline of a king.

The Prince, Olivia Laing, 2025

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ABOUT CHANTAL JOFFE (text courtesy of Victoria Miro gallery)

Born in 1969, Chantal Joffe lives and works in London. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and was awarded the Royal Academy Wollaston Prize in 2006. Joffe exhibits widely – nationally and internationally at venues including The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK (2023-2024); The Modern, Fort Worth, Texas, USA (2022); Koohouse Museum, Yangpyong, Korea (2022); The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2021); The Foundling Museum, London, UK (2020); Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2020); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK (2019); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2018); The Lowry, Salford, UK (2018); Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2018, 2017); National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavík (2016); National Portrait Gallery, London, UK (2015); Jewish Museum, New York, USA (2015); Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, UK (2015); Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2014–2015); Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2013–2014); MODEM, Hungary (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2011); Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, USA (2009); MIMA Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK (2007); Galleri KB, Oslo, Norway (2005) and Bloomberg Space, London, UK (2004).

 

Her work is in numerous institutional and private collections, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA; Detroit Institute of Arts, USA; National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

 

Joffe has created a major public work for the Elizabeth line in London titled A Sunday Afternoon in Whitechapel, on view at Whitechapel Elizabeth line station.

 

 

 

Venue:

The Exchange

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