OPENING: 10 May, 17.00 - 19.30H

Upstream Gallery proudly presents its first solo exhibition with Joseph Thabang Palframan (1997, Namibia) in the main exhibition space. Palframan was raised in England and Botswana. He studied Fine Art at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in the Netherlands and Art History at Leiden University. Now based in Belgium, his practice spans social and studio-based projects, with a focus on painting.

Palframan’s work is deeply informed by his personal background. Of both African and European descent, he navigates the layered histories between, for instance, England and Botswana or the Netherlands and South Africa. This personal inquiry extends into broader questions of colonial legacies and their influence on contemporary life, especially within art history.

His current exploration of Pointillism examines its connections to scientific and technological advancements and its departure from realism. Much like digital screens, pointillist works rely on tiny dots that blend into cohesive images from a distance. Each dot, comparable to a pixel, only gains meaning as part of a larger whole. This visual language offers Palframan a framework for thinking about fragmentation, identity, and how visibility is constructed.

In his solo exhibition, Everybody Wants To Be A Rolling Stone, Palframan explores the tension between visibility and erasure. In his paintings, often portraits of individuals or groups, Palframan introduces interruptions: fields of white paint, dots or smudges that both obscure and complete the image. These gestures of erasure are not acts of removal but of transformation. White paint becomes a tool for disruption, layering meaning onto the surface rather than taking it away, such as a white dot interrupting an image, a pixel that falters, or a scratch showing traces of use.

Palframan's work thus echoes the aesthetics of resistance: the deliberate interruption of dominant systems. When climate activists throw their paint over an iconic painting, that act can be seen as destruction or erasure. But what if we see it as a (temporary) new work of art, a painting being finished, or radically re-framed? Erasing is not the same as undoing. What is covered over is never gone: its presence lingers. A new image emerges, one that relies entirely on what preceded it. Palframan adopts a similar way of thinking: erasure as construction, absence as presence. His choice to “white out” parts of the image, visually and metaphorically, calls into question what is allowed to remain visible, and by whom.

For Palframan, the use of white is never neutral. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein noted in Remarks on Colour, we cannot imagine the colour white transparently. White is opaque; white hides what is hidden behind it. A parallel can be drawn to the many ways in which whiteness as a norm conceals other histories. The exhibition’s title references The Rolling Stones, whose sound was deeply rooted in African American blues. Despite acknowledging these influences, it is their name and image that dominate the cultural narrative. This dynamic of appropriation, where Black creativity fuels white recognition, persists in many cultural spheres, including the art world. As Palframan notes: “The use of paintings as substitutes for actual representation of black artists creates the impression of change. By exploring the erasing capabilities of white paint, my intention is to present more truthful images.”

Everybody Wants To Be a Rolling Stone | Joseph Palframan 

10 May - 21 June 2025
OPENING: 10 May: 17.00 - 19.30H
Kloveniersburgwal 95, Amsterdam