Pylon Art & Culture hosts the first solo exhibition of Valentino Joseph, shedding light on another side of his multifaceted practice. Through sketches made in bed just before sleep, models for sculptures that were never realised, and a series of portrait studies culminating in a single painting, the exhibition reveals a parenthetical body of work from the 1990s, set alongside his scenographic and graphic design creations.

The exhibition Night Works and Other Studies unfolds as an autonomous epilogue to the performance 1953, which will be staged at the Rialto Theatre on 31 October with Valentino Joseph at its dramaturgical core. It opens on the second day of the Limassol Art Walks, as part of the Art Explora Festival & in collaboration with the Island Club, carrying elements and materials from the theatre stage into the exhibition space, while also presenting works shown exclusively in the exhibition.

Joseph’s trajectory is marked by his remarkable flexibility across media and languages: from stage design and costume to graphic design and illustration. In Limassol he has been a seminal figure, contributing consistently to the shaping of the city’s cultural life and bringing theatre, music and the visual arts into dialogue. Night Works and Other Studies is not conceived as a retrospective, but as an invitation into a personal and unseen creative process.

about the artist

Valentino Joseph was born in Limassol, Cyprus, in 1953. He studied Graphic Design & Illustration at the Cambridge College of Arts & Technology (1971–1974) and Chelsea School of Art, London (1977). Since 1981 he has worked as a freelance set and costume designer, graphic designer and illustrator. Since 1984 he has collaborated with the cultural organisation Diastasis, designing sets and costumes for over thirty productions, many touring Europe, the USA and Russia. He has worked with directors such as Nicos Charalambous, Michael Cacoyannis, and choreographers including Lorca Massine, Peter Curtis and Dimitris Papaioannou. He is a founding member of Cyprus Opera (1983), for which he designed Così fan tutte and Le Nozze di Figaro. He has also designed for the Cyprus National Theatre, Praxis Theatre (Limassol), and numerous concerts, events and galas.