Un singe en vert, 2021

Julien Wolf  

Oil painting on canvas. Signed on the back by the artist.

“At first glance, we are invited to a colorful carnival. Everything is movement here! As if Julien Wolf had tried to capture the essence of models unable to stay in place. As if he wanted to capture lights so fleeting that they became streaks of color in his retinas. Then, lingering for a moment in front of the artist's paintings, one cannot help but see creatures hatching there. They are there, lurking in the images. Is it an arm or a wing, behind this gesture, behind this line? Is it a head, an eye in this roundness, or a mouth—perhaps a cry? Or a pareidolia? Our imagination comes alive and stirs. She makes appear in these paintings a bestiary from our own thoughts. These critters come to life and we invent destinies for them, sadness too — without knowing if someone other than us would ascribe similar feelings to them. And already we know that tomorrow we will feel for them other affections, according to our moods or our lives. And we understand: these canvases are in fact multicolored Rorsach tests from which we bring out our most intimate frailties and the most universal anxieties. The artist buried the darkness behind his colors. He lured us with poetry and childhood to touch our hearts. The apparent casualness felt at first glance concealed the harshness of the work and camouflaged the rigor of the compositions. The levity was however not feigned: it is a smile, a politeness, that Julien Wolf addresses to his fears and to ours."

Régis Jaulin