Joshua Leon

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The Missing O and E, Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK, 2024

Kurt, Ken, Curtis, David (what’s in a name?) 
9 Giclée prints, veneer, beech, stained glass 

[ ] O [ ] E [ ] 
21 Stained glass panes

A portrait in f I 
Antique rosewood veneer, sapele veneer, MDF, birch 

A portrait in f II 
Antique rosewood veneer, sapele veneer, MDF, birch 

Enigma Variations Single-channel audio installation, 
36 minutes, 36 seconds, begins on the hour Violin, silence, 8020 genelec speaker, speaker stand, Focusrite interface Original composition by Edward Elgar (1899), performed by Athena Octavia



The Process, published by Chisenhale Gallery & Mousse Publishing, 2024

Joshua Leon’s first book accompanied his commission at Chisenhale Gallery, London. The outcome of two years of writing and documenting his own research processes, the publication comprises original writing by Leon alongside archival imagery. Tracing history, memory and self across time and site, the text traverses locations including a synagogue in Bordeaux, an American bar in Vienna and a veneer factory in London’s East End to reflect on the experiences of the Jewish diaspora in Europe and the formation of contemporary Jewish identity.

Throughout, archival materials and images collected by Leon–architectural blueprints, immigration documents, musical scores and family photographs–visually trace slippages between personal and wider social histories. At once a fragment, a memoir and poetic prose, The Process details the varied ideas, intellectual figures and experiences that coalesce in Leon’s work, whilst complicating the role of artistic production in acts of repair, restoration and remembrance.


Shuadit , 2024
Chocolate mold, print on paper 

 Slippages, 2023
Digital Inkjet print on paper




Loose Routes along the familiar
Walk



Morning Coffee, 
Poster, 
Spoleto, Italy, 2022


Translation: Morning coffee and its lingering aroma are documents. A walk is a document, so too the footprints you make. The conversation is an event; its memory is its document. Olive seeds resonate, they tremor and speak of troubled trees, they too are documents. We are restaging the document as undocumentable, a dramaturgy of the absent.

Attendance(s) Close to the Close, 2021
Digital Inkjet print on paper, coffee, apple, envelopes, candles, matches, wood, glass, dust
Dimensions Variable 

Proposal to Reform (windows 1939), 2021
Ink on tracing paper