Jon Joanis and Inbal Nissim's works are linked through the immediacy of the artist's hand, and practices that segue between drawing and painting. The artists share a formal, conceptual and art-historical vocabulary that extends from the genesis of landscape painting as a discrete stylistic discourse in the 16th century, to the Post-Reformation Romanticism of Caspar David Friedrich, the Visionary work of William Blake, the symbolism of certain threads of late 19th century French Painting, and Spiritualist Abstraction. Other references include Outsider Art, Surrealism and anomalous non-canonical figures of the 20th century, such as Forrest Bess, Adnan Etal and Per Kirkeby, amongst others. Joanis and Nissim work between figuration and abstraction – each informs the other within the emergent stylistic trend best described as a kind of 'Magic Realism'. With the calamity of 2020, their work envisions new horizons, uncertain and open narratives for the viewer to occupy, and imaginative vistas without borders, or circumscribed by human failings.
Jon Joanis (b. Montreal, 1969) spent his formative years learning drawing and painting under the Canadian painter and illustrator Leslie Coppold (Royal Canadian Academy of Arts) while assisting in teaching high school art classes and also briefly apprenticing with Canadian painter Stanley Cosgrove. In 1988, after completing a Fine Arts and Design program near Montreal, Jon had two works selected to represent Canada for a UNESCO exhibition in Paris. Throughout, Joanis studied and permoformed music professionally as a jazz guitarist, eventually becoming a student of guitarist Mike Stern in New York City, and also studying guitar and composition under Roddy Ellias in Montreal. Over the years, Jon worked as an artist and designer for other artists and special effects companies in Montreal and Los Angeles, painting, sculpting and model-making as well as freelance graphic and interior designing. Jon continues to play and write music, while seriously reacquainting and reconfirming his relationship with drawing and painting.
Inbal Nissim (b. 1979, Jerusalem) is an Israeli artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Nissim holds an MFA and a BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Tel Aviv. Her work is intuitive and driven from an inner visual and experiential archive of collected images, emotions, places, objects and people, as well as memories, and personal and collective histories.