Leslie Digges Joynes,USA
New York-based visual artist Les Joynes (American, b. 1963 Santa Barbara, California) work has exhibited at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museu Brasileiro de Escultura, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Maejima Art Center, Japan; Art & Culture Foundation, Seoul; Museum of Modern Art, Wales; AIT Tactical Museum, Tokyo; Norimatsu Museum, Japan; 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York; Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York; Sandra Buergel Gallery, Berlin; Nylon, London; Mizuma Gallery, Tokyo. He was Japan Ministry of Culture Scholar, Tokyo; NKD Fellow, Norway; Edwin Austin Abbey Fellow, New York and artist fellow at the Bauhaus, Germany and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. He is a graduate of Goldsmiths College, London with an MA Fine Art and is completing the PhD in Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK
Joynes is founder of Form Laboratory - a nomadic museum-within-a-museum - a process-based laboratory creating artifacts from found materials - transforming them through spectacle into objects that merge layers of historicity into combinatory new forms. These works explore artist-made archeological sites that become assembly lines of yet unclassified evolved objects that proliferate both in his sculptural installations, performances and paintings. His work is currently being prepared for exhibition in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Nagano, Japan in 2012.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2013 Gallery 532 Thomas Jaeckel, New York, NY
2012 Museu
Brasileiro de Escultura, São Paulo, Brazil
2011 Gallery
532 Thomas Jaeckel, New York, NY
2010 Treignac
Projet/ Art Center, Correze, France
Form
Laboratory, Tokyo (public performance), Tokyo, Japan
2009 Form
Laboratory – Midtown Manhattan, New York, NY
Trace,
Singapore (public performances) Singapore
2008 Amotgaard
Art Center, Les Joynes: Parallel Universes, Bygstad, Norway
Michael
Steinberg Fine Art, Les Joynes: Middleworlds, New York, NY
2005 Space
Gallery, London, UK
1998 Casa
Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
1997 Norimatsu
Museum, Matsuyama, Japan
Selected Group Exhibitions
Selected Group Exhibitions
2012 Fenberger House Museum, Nagano, Japan, curated by R. McDonald, Nagano, Japan
Seoul
Foundation for Arts & Culture, Seoul, Korea
2011 Impressionismus
ausserhalb Frankreichs, Berlin,
curated Klaus Winichner.Berlin, Germany
2010 University
of Minnesota, Katherine Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
Museu
Brasileiro de Escultura, São Paulo, Brazil
Museum
of Modern Art, Wales, UK
Exit
11, curated by Luc Fierens and Benoit Piret, Grand-Leez, Belgium
San
Diego State University, curated by Bibiana Padilla Maltos, San Diego,
CA
2007 New
General Catalog, "The Guy Debord Show," Brooklyn, NY
Michael
Mazzeo/ Peer Gallery, New York, NY
Sandra
Buergel Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2006 South
La Brea Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Romo
Gallery, Atlanta, GA
CBGB,
New York, New York, NY
2005 Mizuma
Gallery/ Art Fair Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Romo
Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Mizuma
Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2004 Triangle/Space,
London, UK
2003 Bergstübl
Projekte Mitte, Berlin, Germany
Albert
Schweitzer spielt Johann Sebastian Bach, Berlin.
Curated by Klaus Winichner Berlin,
Germany
Mars
Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2002 Tactical
Museum/ AIT, Tokyo, Curated by Roger McDonald, Tokyo, Japan
Maejima
Art Center, Okinawa. Curated by Roger McDonald, Okinawa, Japan
2001 Mizuma
Gallery, Tokyo, Table Manners. Curated by Roger McDonald, Tokyo,
Japan
The
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Curated by Emil Goh,
Sydney, Australia
Gallery
4a, Sydney. Curated by Emil Goh, Sydney, Australia
Art
& Culture Foundation, Seoul, Korea
2000 Nylon,
London, UK
Asahi
Gallery, Tokyo, Asahi Contemporary Art 2000, Tokyo, Japan
1999 Bangkok
Experimental Film and Video. Curated by Project 304, Bangkok,
Thailand
Tatsumi
Orimoto Space, Kawasaki, Japan
P-House
Gallery, Tokyo, Networking/ British Council UK '98, Tokyo, Japan
1996 Milch
Gallery, London, UK
1995 Barbican
Concourse Gallery, London, UK
Awards and Research
Awards and Research
2012 Discoveries, Seoul 20min. video performance
2010 Glossolalia
(2010), 14 min.
Bubble,
Tokyo (2010), 15 minutes, HD video.
Bubble,
France (2010), 20 minutes, HD video.
Alien
Poetry Society, France (2010), 8 minutes, HD video.
Farewell
to an invisible friend, France (2010), 10 minutes, HD video.
Form
Laboratory II: The Discovery (2010), 30 minutes, HD video.
Form
Laboratory II: The Laboratory (2010), 30 minutes, HD video.
The
interview of the Self (2010), 30 minutes. HD video.
2009 Trace
(2009) Bauhaus Cities of Tomorrow Project, Singapore
2008 Trace
(2008) Bauhaus Cities of Tomorrow Performance, InterBau
(performances
at Hansaviertel), Berlin.
1996 Highchair
(1996), Performances, London, SD video.
Awards and Research
2011 Visiting Scholar in
Philosophy, Columbia University, New York
2011 Visiting Scholar in The School of the Arts, Columbia
University, New York
2010 Harlem Arts Alliance
Grant, New York
2009 Edwin Austin Abbey
Mural Fellow,
National Academy Museum School of Art &
Design, New York
2008 Nordisk
Kunstnarsenter Stipend, Cultural Ministry of Norway
2001 MEXT Scholar,
Japan, Japanese Ministry of Education and Culture, Japan
1995 Erasmus Scholar,
École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts, Paris
King
Sturge Prize, London
1993 Commendation,
Central Saint Martins College of Art, London
Residencies
2009 Artist Fellow, Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau, Germany
Residencies
2009 Artist Fellow, Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau, Germany
Bauhaus
Kolleg, Kulturministerium des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany
2008 NKD-Fellow, Nordisk
Kunstnarsenter, Dalsasen - Cultural Ministry of Norway
2006 Artist Fellow in
printmaking, Nagasawa Artist Park - Awajishima, Japan
2001 Postgraduate
Selection for Sculpture, Musashino Art University, Tokyo
1994 Inner Spaces,
artist-in-residence Skoki/Poznan, Poland
Image © Gion/ Boon Magazine,
Japan
2007 Toosneger Foundation – Printmaking , Dordrecht, Netherlands
1996 Honours, Central Saint Martins College of Art, 1996
2008 Visiting Scholar in Visual Art, Columbia University, New York
Archaeology of Time
Kim Hee-young(Professor, Kookmin
University)
Les Joynes (b. Santa Barbara, USA, 1963),
an American intermedia artist, explores ways in which to encounter different cultures
with objects found in the places he visits. Joynes’ work is based on an
excavating process, in which he discovers objects from the community and
transforms them into new artifacts. His series <Form Laboratory>
exhibited at Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture’s Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon
Playpanopticon (April-May 2012) exemplifies his process that he initiated in
2007. The exhibition at Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon shows a refreshing
conglomeration of discarded and fragmented plastic toys accumulated from nearby
recycling centers in Seoul, which were washed, re-assembled and partially covered
in plastic foam. The fragmented toys provoke curiosity as the objects lose
their identities and become ambiguous. Plastic toys with bright colors are
locked in formless foam that reconnect and hybridize disparate forms. Using the
found objects as raw material, Joynes works with a performance-based process
(of the discovery of the objects and the studio-based transformation of the
objects) which is captured on video and shown with the finished artifacts. For
him the performances and the videos become temporal lenses to explore a host
culture, its found-objects and the production of new hybridized artifacts.
This is what he refers to as an
“archaeology of an object as seen through a multiplicity of moments.” Joynes’
archaeology of time is closely related to the nomadic structure of Form
<Form Laboratory>. Instead of only focusing on end-products in the creative
production process, Joynes focuses on the multiple processes in art-making,
which defies predetermined aesthetic rules and conventional categories. As a
collector of things, Joynes develops archaeological strata of his own while
discovering abandoned objects and creating an ever-expanding personal archive.
By dripping onto fragmented forms with plastic foam, he creates a space between
the recognizable and the unrecognizable. He refers to this as a metaphysical
space can be approached by means of the formlessness. The liminal tension
between the form and the formless is significant in Joynes’ work. It is
associated with the way in which he becomes acquainted with different cultures
by collecting found-objects from new surroundings. Joynes expands on the
novelty of experiences when he is visiting a new culture by creating a new
taxonomy of objects he discovered from a foreign community. Developing a list
of names of the objects becomes then both a process of familiarizing himself
with a new culture as well as the creation of a lexicon in which to approach
that culture through its artifacts. For Joynes each object possesses its own
history. And thus naming the object is a way to disclose it, which involves a
sense of personal discovery - while seeking the multiplicity of timelines in
perceiving the object. Castaway, abject or displaced objects, which are otherwise
no longer visible, are re-visualized in both the process (the transformation
into new configurations of objects) and the archive (which is the accumulation
of the hybridized objects). In this way, Joynes pays close attention to an
abjectness, a fragmented historicity embedded in the castaway toys. (This
exhibition shows a repositioning of archaeological excavation. It is an
archaeological act of burial and re-birth which produces new forms and in turn
their transformation into new artifacts.)
