Julien Deiss

Julien Deiss (born 1983)

Julien Deiss is a German-French artist who now lives and works in Copenhagen. He is born in Düsseldorf and studied at Düsseldorf Art Academy and is specially known for his delicate colour palette and figurative motives. Deiss is inspired by Thorvaldsens sculptures and other classic statues and elements. Julien Deiss has during the last couple of years attempted to reach new clarity in his artworks by being conscious about the steps he´s taking in his artistic work, which he would like to move in a more poetic direction. He collects interesting photos of sculptures and humans, drawings etc. and use them as inspiration for his art.

In the ongoing work process, Julien Deiss starts by painting the canvas by hand often in one single colour in order to satisfy his need for using his hands and work with the paint without thinking about motive or storytelling.

Hereafter, he paints abstract on his canvas, finds new colours and textures, thinking in mood-settings and composition. Next link in his process is creating figures and storytelling and when those things are set, Deiss starts to break down and whipes out in order for the painting to achieve his delicate, light and bright signature look. The original work is deconstructed. Parting the elements from each other and putting them together in new ways create a surprising expression open to new and different interpretations.

During these processes Julien Deiss achieves a final artwork, which is not planned from the beginning and can surprise even himself. He rediscovers the joy of creating and don´t rely on controlled or structured approaches. During the process, Deiss also sense what can come out of his current creation he calls this part ”Ahnung” in German. Sensing the creation is an intuitive approach.

The artist himself explains: ”One must always start with something. I forget myself - I forget the image, I throw myself obstacles in the way, I follow in a naive, indiscriminate way, without fear. Because I know that later you can remove all traces of what is needless. From then on, the danger is over, because the idea of the "beginning" has left an indelible mark meanwhile. This is what initiates me to start, launching my ideas, have moved my feelings.” This is a beautiful and precise description of Julien Deiss´s work and perception of his own process.

The result are the ethereal, delicate and dreamy artworks. But make no mistake, the artworks do have ”mistakes” - something broken, imperfect, destroyed, disrupted and deconstructed. The fine, often antique sculptures, which Deiss incorporates in his artworks have almost always lost something like a body part or put together with something that doesn´t really fit. There is a smaller disfunction in the unity, which undermines the pure esthetics and make the artwork vibrate with a duplicity, a balance between beauty and destruction.