THE SHOPHOUSE is pleased to present UK-based artist Joseph Jones’ first solo exhibition in Asia， exploring the tensions between image, material, and attention. The exhibition brings together a new series of paintings that continue Jones’s precise and contemplative depictions of cats and flowers—subjects through which the artist examines both the intimacy and distance of contemporary representation.

Working consistently at a small scale, Jones develops his paintings through a logic of seriality—a quiet system that allows images to echo, dissolve, and reassert themselves across time. Each painting holds its own distinct presence while also belonging to a wider constellation of repetitions and differences. Drawn from a vast personal archive of thousands of collected photographs, Jones’s subjects—though grounded in real sources—often emerge as composite constructions. His works, while recalling the traditions of still life and portraiture, move beyond direct biography or realism, operating instead like reflections that shift between memory and archetype, reality and dream.

In a recent trip to Hong Kong, Jones was drawn to the coexistence of the natural and the urban—the ways flowers spill from balconies, parks, and roadside planters, and the quiet ubiquity of cats within dense residential streets and shopfronts. These encounters informed a new sensitivity in his work: a dialogue between fragility and resilience, stillness and movement, domesticity and the public sphere. In this context, his paintings can be read as portraits of attention—of how care, observation, and adaptation persist within an ever-shifting urban environment.

Each work carries a distinct, print-like surface, achieved through a technique of sanding back the paint until the linen weave subtly reappears. The clear acrylic ground allows light to absorb and refract through early layers of oil, producing depth while resisting illusionism. This friction—between surface and image, illusion and material—threads through the exhibition as both a formal and philosophical concern.

Quiet yet insistent, Jones’s paintings hold their own kind of empathy: a space where looking becomes an act of reflection, and where the ordinary image is reimagined as something both personal and shared.

THE SHOPHOUSE 欣然呈獻英國藝術家約瑟夫・瓊斯（Joseph Jones）於亞洲的首次個展，探索影像、物料與注意力之間存在的張力。是次展覽帶來一系列嶄新的布面作品，延續瓊斯對貓和花的精微描繪與深思，藉着它們審視當代呈現的親密與距離。

瓊斯持續地創作小型布面作品，並以系列性的邏輯發展其畫作——在靜謐的結構下，影像於時間中迴響、溶解又重新確立。每幅畫作皆是獨特的存在，又同屬一個擁有廣泛重複性與差異性的系列整體。瓊斯的創作題材源自他所建立龐大的個人檔案，當中包含數千張收集而來的照片，雖植根於真實來源，卻往往以複合的方式重新呈現。他的作品雖喚起了靜物與肖像畫的傳統，卻超越了直接的傳記或現實主義，作用猶如記憶與原型、現實與夢境之間的反射。

瓊斯在最近一次到訪香港期間，被共生共存的自然與城市所吸引——花朵從陽台、公園和路邊花壇中溢出，貓隻則在密集的住宅街道與商店櫥窗中靜默普遍地存在。這些相遇為其作品帶來了新的敏感度：是為脆弱與韌性、靜止與律動、家庭與公共場所之間的對話。在這一語境下，其畫作可被解讀為注意力的肖像——關於關懷、觀察與適應如何在瞬息萬變的城市環境中持續存在。

每件作品帶有一種獨特的印刷質感，藉由將顏料打磨至隱約呈現亞麻布紋理以成。清晰的塑膠彩基底使光線得以穿透並折射最初畫上的油層，使其產生視覺深度的同時抵抗幻覺主義。這種畫面與影像、幻覺與物料之間的相互摩擦，貫穿整個展覽，達成一種形式與哲學上的關注。

瓊斯的畫作寧靜而堅實，擁有一種僅屬於他引發的共鳴：讓空間中的觀看成為反思，平凡的影像被重新想像為既私密又共享的載體。