These paintings take their primary influences from various travels around the world,
and from trying to integrate other cultural viewpoints into our notions of contemporary
abstact painting. This particular series of paintings on view at Galleri Elenor are made
from materials gathered in places of inspiration. Beeswax from Andalucia, Forty five
year old wooden panels from an eyeglass factory in the middle of America. Silver
and stained leaf from Kyoto in Japan. Shellac from the far East. The paintings allude
to the mysteries of the orient, near and far. The tacticity of the wax, and silks spices
and perfumes. At the same time there is a sense of the history embodied in western
painting; from medieval icons, through the Renaissance to recent developments in
abstract painting. Just as we constantly adjust our senses when travelling, the paintings
too are fluid, fluctuating, and changing up to the final moment of the exhibition.

Steve Joy   10 Mars - 31 Mars 2001

Steve Joy, born 1952 Plymouth, England.
Living in New York

STATEMENT

On arrival at the hotel, antisipation and excitement,
tempered by alienation and loneliness (this was the east)
­ gave to life that quality of displacement where everything
is about to fall into chaos.
If I could only................
it is so close to being.............
If I leaned a little more toward.................
then perhaps it would be possible to come closer to...............
finishing this thing about holding onto something.
Nostalgia for a place that does not exist;
traces of such places made through paintings,
so I do not always have to make the journey myself.
And through their frayed counterparts in stange rooms all over the world
­ as our eyes settle onto a tattered rug or badly stitched curtain,
all the faded grandeur of those nineteenth century palaces
might fill our hearts with a sense of order which falls just this side of disintegration
­ almost to disappear completely, and squeeze what is left into a painting.
(Palma De Mallorca. Jan. 2001)

INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS SINCE 1993

1993   Kunsthaus, Zurich. Switzerland.
1994   Gallery Verena Hofer, «The Oriental Hotels1 Barcelona, Spain.
           Gallery Storrer «The Salvem Paintings1 Zurich, Switzerland.
1995   T1Leerhuys Gallery, Brugge, Belgium.
           Storrer Gallery, «New Paintings» Zurich. Switzerland.
           Gallery Boulou, Bergen, Norway.
1996   Gallery Ferran Cano, Barcelona, Spain.
           Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Virginia. USA.
1997   Bergen City Art Museum, Bergen, Norway.
           Gallery Ferran Cano, Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
           Haugesund City Art Museum, Norway.
           Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts. Omaha, Nebraska, USA.
           Storrer Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland.
1998   Gallery Verena Hofer, Barcelona. Spain.
           Jackson Art Works, Omaha, Nebraska, USA.
1998   Gardens of the Zodiac Gallery, Omaha.
1999   Jan Weiner Gallery, Kansas City.
2000   Gallery Storrer, Zurich, Switzerland.
2000   Gallery Elenor, Oslo.
2000   Betty Wasserman Gallery, New York.
2000/2001 Gallery Storrer. Zürich, Switzerland.
2000   Anderson O1Brien gallery Omaha.