Born in St Albans, Vermont, USA. Lives and works in London, UK. "Joffe’s use of fashion, while loaded conceptually (i.e., its negative associations with female objectification and the “male gaze”), derives from an honest and innocent appropriation of fantasy: Joffe chooses images that she finds most alluring, especially in terms of sparking imaginative narrative, and is driven by a love for and identification with the female form and its accessories. While the echo of feminist theory is inevitable and necessary, and perhaps enhanced by Joffe’s sometimes provocative re-appropriation of fashion photography, her work is distinctive for its feminity..." http://www.cheimread.com/artists/chantal-joffe "Possessing a humorous eye for everyday awkwardness and an enlivening facility with paint, Chantal Joffe brings a combination of insight and integrity to the genre of figurative art. Hers is a deceptively casual brushstroke. Whether in images a few inches square or ten feet high, fluidity combined with a pragmatic approach to representation seduces and disarms simultaneously. Almost always depicting women or girls, sometimes in groups but recently in iconic portraits, the paintings only waveringly adhere to their photographic source, instead reminding us that distortions of the brush or pencil can often make a subject seem more real. Joffe's paintings always alert us to how appearances are carefully constructed and codified, whether in a ..." http://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/19-chantal-joffe/ "Hung around the gallery like banners, her visceral 10-foot tall portraits of women from the fashion pages are like a degenerate version of social realism. Although the models are undoubtedly human, with cares and woes, more anodyne characteristics and expressions are imposed by stylists and photographers. Joffe seems to resurrect these women as real people, the paint reanimating faces that were previously mask-like." http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/chantal_joffe.htm undefined

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