Peter Joseph at the Lisson Gallery

Published on the occasion of an exhibition at Lisson Gallery (February – March 2007). Born in 1929 Joseph is the only artist to have shown with Lisson Gallery since it opened in the 1960s. Now, at 77, Peter Joseph re-invents himself with this new body of work. Known for his two-colour, tonal canvases of precise, carefully considered hues, Joseph’s work historically exists within self-imposed, specific structures and parameters – the effect being one of unlimited freedom confined within the ‘safety’ of a framed construct. While these new paintings retain all of the characteristics expected of a Joseph painting, where once the sense of freedom was confined within boundaries, there is a now a shift into compositional improvisation, creating a new sense of freedom that exists outside of the geometry or ‘architecture’ of his earlier work.Not only does Peter Joseph not consider himself a minimalist artist, he sites early Venetian and Florentine painting as influences and subscribes to a methodology usually associated with that of Renaissance painters.