The Joyful II 1971

Dzevad Hozo made *The Joyful II*, and it is about as joyful as a Rothko chapel. It’s definitely not a landscape, but for me it's hard not to imagine a body here, albeit a weird, wonderful one. The shapes are layered and blobby, like soft organs pressed together, and the colour palette is muted, save for that saturated red, like a burst blood vessel. The dark patches on top and below feel like weights holding everything down. There’s a real physicality to the piece; you can almost feel the textures of the paper and the ink. The title is what really gets me, it makes the image more about the *idea* of joy, rather than joy itself. I think of artists like Philip Guston, who embraced ambiguity and multiple interpretations in his work. Maybe Hozo is doing the same, reminding us that joy isn’t always simple or straightforward.