Chantal Joffe

Why this artist matters now

Chantal Joffe’s loose, textural portraits capture her female subjects with an awkward, charming sensibility. The artist often takes inspiration from fashion magazines, photo albums, and pornography. She highlights women’s poses and outfits in dripping, gestural compositions that evoke the stylized portraiture of Alice Neel, Max Beckmann, and Alex Katz. The results, which reveal the multiplicity of female experience, appear both casual and psychologically charged. Joffe received her MA from the Royal College of Art in 1994 and has since exhibited in New York, London, Seoul, Milan, Venice, and Paris. Her work belongs in the collections of the Royal College of Art, the National Portrait Gallery in London, Saatchi Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston. In 2017, Joffe was commissioned to create work for a new railway station at Whitechapel in London.

Source: Lehmann Maupin · Trust score: 100% · Updated 1mo ago