Les Joynes

Les Joynes

Les Joynes (b. Southern California) is a multimedia contemporary artist who lives and works in New York.

Joynes’s practice spans cross-cultural collaboration, site-specific performance, and experimental film. Drawing from Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, as well as London’s DIY and YBA scenes. His work has been described as a “jovial formlessness” (Art Monthly, London) and engages a lineage that includes Mark Dion, Jason Rhoades, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, alongside earlier influences such as Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Cindy Sherman, and Barbara Kruger.

Working across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Joynes challenges traditional boundaries through the use of unorthodox materials and community participation. Central to his practice is FormLAB, an ongoing series of collaborative performances and installations that build on chance-based methodologies inspired by André Breton. Dialogues with Lothar Baumgarten. Rosalind Krauss, Jonathan Crary, and John Rajchman have further shaped his approach to artmaking, collaboration and writing, His work and writing have appeared in Art in America, Flash Art, Springer (Vienna), Art Monntly, Sculpture and NHK television.

He is a recipient of awards and fellowships including the Japan Ministry of Education (MEXT) Scholarship, Taiwan Ministry of Education Scholarship, the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award. He has served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi and as a curator and advisor on international exhibitions. Joynes holds degrees from Central Saint Martins, Goldsmiths and Musashino Art University in Japan, and completed doctoral and postdoctoral research in the UK and Brazil. His work is held in public and private collections across Asia, Europe, and the Americas.