"Baron’s upcoming publication, Intimacies, showcases work by renowned contemporary visual artist Jwan Yosef. This book features new and earlier pieces from the artist’s extensive oeuvre and comprises three bodies of work: Touch, Object and Brush.
Yosef’s works are resistant to formal categorisation, sitting at the intersection between painting and sculpture. His unconventional treatment of paintings includes pulling canvases off of their stretchers such that images are crumpled and distorted, and the structures supporting the paintings are made visible. This playful handling of materials contributes to the tactile, embodied presence inherent to the experience of his work while lending a sly disruptive force to the pieces. The artist attributes his compositional and material subversiveness to his own marginalised identity, stating that: “Both my job as an artist and my experience as a queer man compel me to look for and reconsider the stories and meanings society imposes on material, objects, and people.” Indeed, the artist’s queerness is reflected throughout his work— beyond depictions of homoerotic desire, the pieces have their rhythm and repeated language of marginality and subversion.
Touch and Brush explores notions of tactility and proximity. Abstracted human forms, sometimes partially cropped out of frame, distorted, or blurred over with sweeping brushstrokes, populate the images within this series. There is a hazy, quasi-cinematic quality to the series, with figures often seeming distant and just out of the viewer’s reach. Self-portraits included by the artist reveal a being in the state of becoming, obscured and ephemeral. There is an undeniable corporeality to the images, a playful eroticism, and an exploration of queer desire. Tongues lick at the air; faces are pressed into unseen flesh… the possibility of touch is continually thwarted by a composition, which increases the erotic thrill of the works.
Object is both an exercise in form and an exploration of the artist’s identity at the interstices of nationality, ethnicity, and religion. Blank canvases manipulated over their stretchers have a sculptural quality and allow for complete experimentation with form and texture. Repetitions of images introduce a unique rhythm to the series, which loops and draws the eye toward variation and distortion. This ever-changing focus builds towards a dream-like, transient atmosphere— one which reflects Yosef’s memories of his ancestry and homeland, his complex identity as a queer Arab, and mixed heritage which he strives to connect with through his work:“I’m examining the many dimensions of my identity and background. It’s a reflective practice of not describing my heritage solely within my heritage. Through the revisitation of images and engaging practices of repetition, I am working with memories and remembrance.”"