William Hine is pleased to present Glasschord, a solo exhibition by the London-based artist Joey El Haddad, on view from 12 February to 21 March, 2026.

Throughout Glasschord, El Haddad’s paintings and drawings contain atmospheres shaped by feeling rather than logic. Spaces are neither descriptive nor fully imagined; exploratory territories reveal themselves subtly, rendered in muted and monochromatic textures. Compositional architecture functions as an emotional framework rather than a literal setting; it is controlled but intentionally loose and destabilising so that perspective is unreliable, as is content.

The artist draws upon a disparate range of found images, compiled into an eclectic archive of past and present visual culture. Initial pencil drawings isolate symbols, figures or text from these ephemeral sources that may find their way back to the surface. Painted, engraved and drawn over washes of oil paint over linen and clayboard, these signs become extracted from their primary context, scattered and embedded as residues in the work that become untethered from their origins.

A clear sense of place and structure is withheld through shadowy thresholds and porous borders. Recognisable scenery - landscapes, domestic interiors, urban street scenes - are often filtered through fragmented patterns that cast optical disturbances across the subject. Within these conditions, figures appear as apparitions rather than defined subjects. Their bodies fold into the environment as if made of the same dust or haze as the walls or soil.

The paintings foreground their process; erased contours, compressed lines, pentimenti, and provisional stains remain visible, creating surfaces where intuition and revision coexist. Material effects and symbolic associations meet in a state of partial emergence, where memory is held but never stabilised. The works often feel excavated rather than newly constructed, as though past atmospheres have been compressed into the present moment. Titles extend this logic into language: combined and layered, they function as textures rather than explanations, opening a poetic aperture into each painting’s emotional terrain.