Axelle Fine Arts Galerie Soho

The paintings created by Goxwa appear to be, in both their visual imagery and their very tactile surfaces, artifacts from undetermined centuries past. The costume of her subjects show a Mediterranean flavor, a far-eastern aspect alluded to rather than specified. Utilizing the thousands year old technique of encaustic wax with oil, the paintings are sculpted by her palette knife.  Various lines and designs are incised throughout, revealing layers of color while adding to the effect of a fresco created by an artisan lost to the ages. One look at the faces and eyes of her subjects, though, reveals a decidedly modern subject and a modern creator. 

     This confluence of the past and present embody the dualities that formed Goxwa, whose very name is an ancient word, a form of “Josephine” and pronounced “Joshwa”.  Goxwa was born in the medieval city of Valetta, playing in ruins that are the oldest standing structures in the world.  Her father owned a nightclub called the Metro (a real place fictionalized by Thomas Pynchon in “V”), and as she grew up across the street she observed the locals and world tourists in daily celebration, accompanied by modern fashion and attitudes bathed in modern music echoing down centuries old alleyways.

     Goxwa studied art in London, before moving to Boston to study filmmaking and where she had her first solo show.  A scholarship at the Cite des Arts in Paris saw her return to Europe, resulting in her first major exhibition which was sold out, as was her second show. Gown’s work has always ignored any specific fad or fashion. It is a very personal encapsulation of the glory of the past intersecting with the beauty of the moment. In the near decade long association of Goxwa with Axelle Fine Arts, she has become one of our most beloved and anticipated artists, with collectors waiting years to acquire one of her signature work. It is only upon viewing these works in person, with the semi-transparent layers of pigment-infused wax on canvas, that a true appreciation of Goxwa and her lost worlds, newly created, can be achieved.