about





Jonathan Joosten is a German-Dutch artist living and working between Berlin and New York City. His artistic practice can beread as resistance to chrononormativity, to the linear structuring of time as it is linked to capitalist productivity and historical continuity. Joosten works with residual or fragmented materials: industrial prototypes, discarded architectural elements, forms that have become obsolete. These are materials that have fallen out of their temporal grid, not yet waste, no longer functional, but caught in a state of limbo. Instead of imposing a logic of progress or completion on these objects, Joosten emphasises incompleteness, delay and repetition.

This defies the values of clarity and linear narration and invites the viewer to dwell in temporal ambiguity. Joosten’s works suggest an ongoing  becoming, a refusal to settle into past or future, memory or vision. The artist thus creates a space for a temporal drag - a reverberation of the past in the present. This form of temporal irritation can be read as both a material and conceptual interruption. What happens when time gets out of sync? When materials, memories and narratives lose their intended place in cultural, industrial or emotional systems? And instead take on alternative rhythms?

His practice thus ties in with author Elizabeth Freeman’s call in Time Binds (2010) to inhabit time in alternative, resistant ways. Neither quite past nor already future: Joosten collects the unclaimed, the half-forgotten, the speculatively remaining.

We find ourselves in the archive of the not-yet.

- Emily Pretzsch




solo/duo-shows























selected 
group-shows:



























































































curated 
shows / events:
2025

INTERCOM
duo | Gasoline Projects | New York City

We are all the weakest link. Goodbye!
duo | Neuworkshop | Munich

Buck up - never say die. We’ll get along 
duo | GlogauAir | Berlin 

2024

TRADING POSTmodernity 
solo | Kunstraum Potsdamer Straße
Gallery Weekend | Berlin

2023

FOLGE #07 (PILOT)
solo | Kirchberger & Wiegner Rohde
Ortstermin 23 | Berlin


2025

great new sun
Polonsky at 93 19th | New York City

GANAHL, JOOSTEN, PRINCE
The Schloss | New York City

Feral
MOLT / Wehrmühle | Berlin

Can we borrow your tools ?
Spoiler | Berlin

Attacke der Retroavantgarde
The Broken Gallery | parallel to Art|Basel
Basel

New Perspective
New & Abstract / ArtConnect | Berlin

We’ll get trough this, ok? 
Emotionpowerhouse | Berlin

The presented Touch
Salon am Moritzplatz  | Gallery Weekend
Berlin

2024

1+1 
Galerie Met | Berlin

SYNC
JohnenPrivat - supported by Max Goelitz
Berlin

The Spirit Of 
Lothar Wolleh Raum | Art Week | Berlin

Unreal Estate
Suprainfinit Gallery | Bucharest

One To(o) Many
GROTTO |  (reading) | Berlin

Nacht des Chamäleons
Gorenflos Architekten  | Berlin

Behind the Scene
UdK | Berlin

Stranger Danger
Kunstraum Potsdamer Straße | Berlin

2023

Entropy
Lieu Idéal | Paris  

Works for me
Studio Christian Jankowski | Berlin 

Permeable Kollisionen
Zentrale | Gallery Weekend | Berlin

FLUXUS+studis
Museum FLUXUS+ | Potsdam 

2022

Kafayi yemek
Neuköllner Salon | 48h Neukölln | Berlin

Filmfest Müchen
Engtanz / P1 | Munich

Filmfest Müchen
Kunsthalle München | Munich

Late Bloomers
HGB | Leipzig

Ping-Pong
HGB | Leipzig

minimal
Institut für alles Mögliche | Leipzig

ASR
OXI Club | Berlin


2025

Can we borrow your tools ?
Spoiler | Berlin

2023

Spiritus 05 | Berlin  
Lobe Block 
Exhibition & Launch 5. issue of spiritus

2022

Spiritus 04 | Berlin  
Haus der Statistik
Launch 4. issue of spiritus

2021

Spiritus 03 | Berlin  
Souvenir Official
Exhibition & Launch 3. issue of spiritus

Spiritus 02 | Berlin  
LVX Pavillion, Volksbühne
Exhibition & Launch 2. issue of spiritus

2020

Spiritus 01 | Berlin 
Gropius Bau
Launch 1. issue of spiritus




ReferralsTincidunt Nibh
Ultricies Vestibulum
Facilisis Ornare,
Porta Libero Universitas,
tincidunt.nibh@portolibero.edu.au
0431 070 713

Dictumst Gravida
Auctor Ligula / Founder
Aliquam Aliquam Congue, Felis
dictumst.gravida@gmail.com
0404 965 983

Rhoncus Mattis
Suspendisse Professor
Facilisis, Bibendum Ornare & Congue
0415 843 581
rhoncus.mattis@facilisis.edu

Sollicitudin Euismod
Founder
Pellentesque Grounds, Porta Libero
0422 221 072
sollicitudin@vestibulum.com

Egestas Convallis
Deputy Parturient Dictum
Duis & Ultricies Vestibulum
egestas.convallis@vestibulum.edu
0402 254 956










Press
Vestibulum Inceptos Gravida’, Ornare Review,
by Tincidunt Nisl
2024

‘Ullamcorper Faucibus (Congue) Euismod’, by Ligula Parturient, Bibendum Review Porta Libero
2023

Dictumst Tristique, Facilisis Magazine, Edition Two, Porta Libero
2021

Auctor Adipiscing Art Magazine, Porta Libero
2020

Sollicitudin Ornare Magazine,
Porta Libero
2020                  









Last Updated 24.10.31

ISSUE (series)


ISSUE [0724] | UdK | Berlin | 2024
ISSUE [0924] | Lothar Wolleh Raum | Berlin | 2024 
ISSUE [1024] | JohnenPrivat | Berlin | 2024


A magazine with an annual subscription. A payment and thus a promise for content that doesn't yet exist. The issues yet to be published are already assumed. Providing a contemporary overview. This current moment is changing, being overwritten. And requires replacement with new content. The magazine's graphic grid remains, and the cover template is merely replaced in terms of content. A new photo, a new name, the issue one step further. It's a production machine. 

Once the preparatory work has been completed, this logic can continue to wander freely, settling within the tested form. I'm interested in what leads to the final version before what is visible, and how these prototypes and steps lose their function and become irrelevant at the moment of completion. They remain in storage, too valuable to be discarded, but they represent dead material. Retired, waiting in storage for a possible overview exhibition or publication in which they could be honored one last time as an important part of the development.

[↑]

Jonathan Joosten ISSUE [0724] | Berlin | 2024

Jonathan joosten ISSUE [1024] | Berlin | 2024
Jonathan Joosten ISSUE [1024] | Berlin | 2024
Jonathan joosten ISSUE [0924] | Berlin | 2024 
Jonathan Joosten ISSUE [0924] | Berlin | 2024


Buck up  - never say die.  We’ll get along !


GloguaAir | Berlin | 2025
In collaboration with Moksha Richards


Surrounded by paralysed witnesses with a clearly defined task. Charged with emotional value, part of our individual worlds. 

Utilitarian forms made to serve. Decades in the same framework. Still functional, still standing. Cycles of consumption and industry. Memories of cracked shells, of stains and colour streaks from a previous pulped life. Recycled, reshaped, and marked by their pasts.

Demanded material accumulates presence, builds a character. The objects anthropomorphize  into figures who have lived through repetition and rhythm. Carriers of evidence of what has passed through them, came, stayed, and left.

We were inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. The Tramp, reduced to a functional part of the machine, mirrors these objects. Designed for use, bent to utility. And yet he resists. He clowns, he dances, he escapes. In these systems of enforced rhythms, he remains alive. The Tramp and his companion are the only joyful spirits in a world of automata. They live by their wits, their humour, their movement. 

The final card of Modern Times reads: “Buck up - never say die. We’ll get along !” A trace remains. A future stirs. 
[↑]


Jonathan Joosten
Buck up - never say die. We’ll get along !
Jonathan Joosten & Moksha Richards
Buck up - never say die. We’ll get along !

ARCHIVED HERO (series)


AH 01 | UdK, KUNSTRAUM Potsdamer Straße | Berlin | 2023, 2024
AH 02 | KUNSTRAUM Potsdamer Straße | Berlin | 2024
AH 04.1 - 04.2 | Emotionpowerhouse | Berlin | 2025
AH 04.3 | Salon am Moritzplatz | Berlin | 2025


A toy representing a character is just an imprint shaped by play, a labelled character. They don't want to leave, talking about their glorious times,in which they were once at the top. Icons in films, advertising, stories idealised, glorified and commercialised. 

These figures, torn from history, have become myths unable to die due to their mass medialisation, part of our popular culture. But slowly they escape into the wall. They can no longer follow the contemporary, which is not their own, they fall out, become alienated and isolated and lose their once shining status as changing times and new values shift their context.

[↑]


Jonathan joosten ARCHIVED HERO 02 | Berlin | 2024
Jonathan joosten ARCHIVED HERO 02 | Berlin | 2024
Jonathan joosten ARCHIVED HERO 01 | Berlin | 2023

RE:VISION (series)


RE:VISION - SF [32/83] | Galerie Met | Berlin | 2024
RE:VISION - CR [67/06] | JohnenPrivat | Berlin | 2024


Stories are never fixed; they shift with time, reframed by new contexts and cultural sensibilities. A remake is not a mere repetition but a reinterpretation. An act of translation that transforms a narrative through its setting, language, and aesthetics. The same story, told again, becomes a reflection of its era, shaped by the values and desires of the present.

Locations reorient meaning, language alters rhythm, fashion and design embed it in the new present. Each retelling is a negotiation, showing that what endures is not the story itself but the act of revisiting it.

Recognition is a pleasure, it's not jumping in at the deep end, but a docking. Why did Disney buy Lucasfilm, the company behind Star Wars, for 4.05 billion US dollars in 2012? Not out of enthusiasm and fandom, but because it saw potential in the already familiar world that George Lucas had built. A basis for numerous spin-offs and sequels. From the perspective of a hoped-for positive reception, or even just the hope of arousing interest in consuming the newly produced product, it is of course also a certainty.

[↑]


Jonathan joosten RE:VISION - SF [32/83]  | Berlin | 2024
Jonathan joosten RE:VISION - SF [32/83] | Berlin | 2024
Jonathan Joosten RE:VISION - CR [67/06]  | Berlin | 2024

CUT-FISHING FOR A VIEW


JohnenPrivat, supported by Max Goelitz | Berlin | 2024
In collaboration with Daniel Hölzl


Lines resurrect the silhouette of a window hidden behind the plaster wall. Through repetition with a chalk line, a proposal is made to turn back time and reestablish what once was. Brick borrowed from the original facade ground to dust.

The site specific work functions as a portal, activated by the residue of lived material. The faint remnants are a mention of potentiality and to the fragility of architecture, to the return to nothing. The window outlived its original purpose, now obsolete, it renegotiates the boundaries of utility.

Simultaneously the contradictory dialog only enables itself trough the current staging of space.

[↑]


Jonathan joosten & Daniel Hölz CUTFISHING FOR A VIEW | Berlin | 2024
Jonathan joosten & Daniel Hölz CUTFISHING FOR A VIEW | Berlin | 2024
Jonathan joosten & Daniel Hölz CUTFISHING FOR A VIEW | Berlin | 2024