Artist as Explorer: Les Joynes (US) is a multi-media artist based in New York. He is founder of FormLAB (www.formlaboratory.com), a multi-city exhibition series in museums that explores culture through found histories, objects, sounds and sites. He conceived FormLAB in 1996 at Goldsmiths, London as a nomadic laboratory to reveal and obseerve the events and processes of artmaking. FormLAB is inspired by André Breton's Cadaver Exquis (1918) and Cabaret Voltaire's (1916) interdisciplinary performances and creates exhibitions and cabinets of curiosity in multiple cultures. His work on artist exploration is featured in an upcoming book published by Cambridge Scholars (2017).

Joynes is educated in the US, UK and Japan. He received a BA cum laude in History (1986) and M.Sc (1988) from Boston University; BA HOns Fine Art (1966) from Central Saint Martins College of Art in London; MA Fine Art (1997), Goldsmiths, London; Master of Fine Arts (2001) from Musashino Art University, Tokyo where he was Japan Ministry of Education and Culture Scholar (1997-2001); PhD in Fine Art (2012) deom Leeds Metropolitan University and Post-Doc at University of Sau Paulo, Brazil.

He was Visiting Scholar in Art and Philosophy at Columbia University (2008-2012) and Erasmus Scholar at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-arts, Paris and is Visiting Scholar presenting on arts in higer education at Columbia University's Teacher's College where he is ACMS Department of State research grantee.

His work is represented in New York by Thomas Jaeckel Gallery and is in public and private collections in the UK, US, Japan, Belgium and recently was acquired by the Museu de Arte Brasileira, in Sao Paulo Brazil. He has exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, Brazil; Maejima Art Center, Japan; Seoul Foundation for Art & Culture, Korea; Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Thailand; Nordisk Kunstnarsenter, Norway; Museum of Modern Art, Wales, UK; AIT Tactical Museum, Japan; Norimatsy Museum, Japan; Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York; Sandra Bürgel Gallery, Berlin; Nylon, London; Mizuma Gallery, Tokyo. His work was selected by the US Department of State for its exhibition in Mongolia at Zanabazar Museum of Fine Art (2014). 

FormLAB is a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) ArtSpire Project and has received support from the US Department of State, CEC ArtsLink, The Ministry of Culture, Mongolia; the Ministry of Culture, Brazil; It has been awarded a FulBright-Hays Grant for Mongolia (2014) and for FormLAB's upcoming exhibition at Beijing's new Inside-Out Art Museum in China (2017).