The intimate paintings of Jwan Yosef hint at something bigger

Rather than staging sitters or working from personal photography, the main visual inspiration for Jwan Yosef’s intimate paintings is found imagery. He likes to collect digital relics – those he describes as not “really of much importance” – and zooms into specific objects and body parts, painting a smaller portion of the scene to create a new, more subtle narrative – one that lets viewers imagination’s take the lead. A moustachioed mouth mid-lick, a bare pair of legs bent upward, and mouth open wide in anger, dismay or desire – it’s hard to tell. “I don’t like to tell the full story in my paintings,” says Jwan. “I prefer a whisper or a hint rather than a scream and a bold message.”

A new book from Baron Books, Intimacies, chronicles the early work of the now LA-based artist, who was born in Syria before moving to Sweden at a young age. “What might seem as two very contrasting beliefs or manners have actually created a pretty diverse framework for my practice,” says Jwan. The book contains three of the artist’s early bodies of work: Touch, Object and Brush.

Touch and Brush feature paintings in the more ‘traditional’ sense, using oil and acrylic paints, but their subject matter can’t be described as such. The works throughout tap into Jwan’s interest in the “nuances of seduction” and the “push-pull of sex and sexuality”, scenes steeped in a quiet steaminess, a tangible sense of lust emanating from the canvas. Pieces like Head – a work continually recreated by Jwan that shows “a portrait of a head and a face that is so engulfed into what appears as a wall, so much so that it almost suffocates in its desire to get involved” – might not initially appear inherently sexual. But within the context of Jwan’s wider body, and placed alongside his other scenes and snippets, the faceless hardness of the wall turns into something softer and more quietly suggestive.

It’s not only Jwan’s scenes that experience an element of restriction, but his colour palette too: pieces rarely feature more than one or two hues. “I find comfort in certain restrictions. I am a creature of comfort in many ways but I also obsess with the idea of a uniform existence,” says Jwan. “One that to some degree is controlled but also leaves a sense of familiarity in a world often narrated in overexposure.” Such restriction really enhances just how important brushwork can be. Pieces in grey and off-white tones, and finished with clean brushstrokes, like Lick and Pole, evoke the classy sheen of 1950s erotica, once stocked high up on the shelves of newsagents. While the pieces with, rougher, more blurred strokes somehow feel more modern and digital, closer to their original reference; works like Howl and a Study for Touch appear like a moment of passion caught on CCTV, or a film paused on a specific frame.

Jwan has often struggled with the feeling of his work being inconsistent, a worry that’s been assuaged by working with Baron on the book. “Looking back now I realise there’s a very solid narrative that I am very proud of today,” says the artist. For example, Jwan has recently returned to the very specific medium of the works featured in Brush – reversed oil on plexi glass. “There is a sense of melancholy in doing these paintings today, but also in their format and speed feel extremely relevant today.” If Jwan’s experience is anything to go by, carving out time, space and a reason to reflect seems to be the remedy to creative doubt. “It’s been a total roller coaster ride compiling these works together into my first monograph,” he ends. “But I’ve made something so special here and there’s so much more to tell with this body of work.”