Chantal Joffe brings a combination of insight and integrity, as well as psychological and emotional force, to the genre of figurative art. Defined by its clarity, honesty and empathetic warmth it is attuned to our awareness as both observers and observed beings, apparently simple yet always questioning, complex and emotionally rich. The recent works on view, which depict the artist and her daughter, Esme, alone and together, touch on the themes of Joffe’s current institutional exhibition For Esme – with Love and Squalor, on view at Arnolfini, Bristol, which focuses on the shifting relationship between mother and daughter, navigating spaces, dynamics and roles. Joffe has often talked about her paintings in terms of transitions, those associated with growing and ageing, as well as her attempt to mark a life’s milestones. These concerns are especially pronounced in her images of teenagers, such as Esme in White, 2020, a recent work depicting Esme around the time of her sixteenth birthday.

Reading in the Bath II, 2019, introduces new subject matter to Joffe’s art and is, in part, a re-envisioning of Pierre Bonnard’s many paintings of his wife, Marthe, reclining in the bath. Writing in the catalogue for For Esme – with Love and Squalor, Dorothy Price considers these new works to be a continuation of ‘Joffe’s complex homage to French modernism.’ Price continues, ‘Joffe’s genius is to flip Marthe’s bath around and re-insert herself into the frame instead, right way up and fully frontal to the picture plane… Whereas Marthe is only signified by her motionless, hairless, alabaster body, Joffe confronts us head on… palpably alive, engaging her brain whilst reading (or trying to)… No-one disturbs her complete self-absorption. Our presence, our gaze, our look, our obsessions have all become irrelevant in Joffe’s powerful reworking of Bonnard…’

Born in 1969, Chantal Joffe lives and works in London. The acclaimed British painter has exhibited nationally and internationally with venues including Royal Academy of Arts, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Jewish Museum, New York; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; and Neuberger Museum of Art, New York. Her work is in numerous institutional and private collections, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Detroit Institute of Arts; National Portrait Gallery, London; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Joffe will create a major new public work for the Elizabeth line station at Whitechapel, London, which will be on view when the Crossrail station opens in 2021. The exhibition Chantal Joffe: For Esme – with Love and Squalor is currently on view at Arnolfini, Bristol (until 22 November 2020). An exhibition of new work by the artist will be on view at Victoria Miro 10 November–18 December 2020.