Jonas Pell — Ternform Gallery

Fictional artist profile from Ternform Gallery. This document is an original reading sheet, not an authenticated professional CV or record of external awards and exhibitions.

Practice: Sculptural object studies; wrapping, display and the authority of familiar forms.

Jonas Pell works with the visual authority of objects that people think they already know. A sculpted head, a pedestal or a protective covering arrives with a familiar set of expectations. His practice examines what happens when those expectations meet a change in colour, material or handling. The subject is often less the object itself than the distance a viewer places around it: how close it feels possible to stand, and whether it seems available to touch.

Pell begins by describing the function of each component in plain language. A base lifts; a covering protects or conceals; a bright field separates one object from its surroundings. He then changes one relationship at a time, making small tabletop arrangements before thinking about an exhibition room. The process does not assume that adding a discarded material makes an artwork environmentally virtuous. Questions of origin, durability and disposal remain practical questions. His working notes distinguish an observed appearance from a claim about composition, so a glossy fold is not automatically identified as a particular plastic.

Soft Monument brings these concerns together around the image of a classical bust and an ordinary wrapper. The exhibition considers concealment, display and the surprising delicacy of a material often treated as incidental. A fold can hide the eyes while drawing attention to the outline of a head. Pell uses this contradiction to ask how cultural authority survives when the supposedly secondary part of an arrangement becomes its most conspicuous feature.

In conversation about an object, Pell prefers a comparison that can be checked. He might ask whether a shadow belongs to a hard edge or a loose fold, or whether a pedestal changes the apparent size of the thing above it. These questions leave room for disagreement without requiring specialist terminology. His contribution to Ternform's programme is a habit of looking at supports, coverings and intervals with the same care normally reserved for a central object. Visitors can begin at the base of an arrangement and work upward, noticing which part first acquires the status of a monument.

Programme entries:

Soft Monument | 2026-09-19 to 2026-11-08

Edition date: 2026-09-08

No external qualifications, awards or press claims are asserted. Illustrative media sources are recorded separately in the gallery edition.