2026
120 X 95 CM
ED. /10
24CT GOLD LEAF, SILK SCREEN AND ARCHIVAL PIGMENT INKS ON 308GSM COTTON RAG 
SHIPPING IN ~ 3 WEEKS
UNFRAMED
 
Keep This Between Us presents a noblewoman caught in a moment that feels both intimate and incriminating. Poised but with her lipstick smeared, suggests a secret just moments old. Has she silenced someone? Or simply crossed a line that polite society would never forgive? The answer is deliberately unresolved, inviting the viewer to linger in the ambiguity between scandal and crime.
Behind her, roman ruins with 24CT gold leaf camouflage disrupts the idea of luxury as something pure and ornamental. Camouflage - traditionally used to conceal, becomes opulent decoration, hinting that beneath aristocratic refinement something darker may be hidden. The lower half of the composition shifts in colour and pattern, introducing a gold-leaf Ikat motif that fractures the busy surface of the image. This division suggests a split between appearance and truth: dignity above, disturbance below. As with much of Gjoen’s work, beauty and brutality occupy the same space. The noblewoman remains poised and composed, yet the evidence of something undone lingers.
The title, Keep This Between Us, reads like a whispered agreement; a conspiratorial request that what has happened here, whatever it may be, must remain unspoken.