Julie Curtiss

París, Francia, 1982

"In my images, I enjoy the complementarity of humor and darkness, the sinister and the mundane; grotesque forms and vivid colors."

Interview in Artsy magazine, 2019.

            Like many artists born in the recent decades, Julie Curtiss was introduced to the art world through an overexposure to stimuli. Born in France in 1982, she studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and moved for a short time to Chicago to continue her training. There she was often compared to Christina Ramberg (American painter of the late sixties), because of their shared line of work around the female body and a surrealist aesthetic.

            After finishing her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, she traveled to Japan where, influenced by manga and comics, her work becomes more graphical. A year later, Curtiss moved to New York with her husband, and began working for artist Jeff Koons, an experience that, in Curtiss' own words, cannot be described as fruitful. Soon after, she begins working for KAWS’ studio, with whom she develops a real personal and working connection at a time when KAWS's career was on an unprecedented upswing. The precision demanded by this work lead Curtiss to hone KAWS’s technical skills even further and discover new elements to incorporate into her own work.

            Thus, her paintings begin to unfold not only in their technical aspects, but also in their conceptual ones. Curtiss proposes to reelaborate different feminine archetypes derived from Surrealism, often in a sinister way. Through stereotypes such as long nails, tight dresses, wide-brimmed hats or huge sunglasses Curtiss presents characters from everyday life and explores them through deconstructed and fragmented details, loaded with eroticism and mystery.

            The presence of very long hair is another of her most distinctive features—hair that sometimes transmutes, or is reminiscent of intimate parts of the body, or simply functions as a mark that defines the characters, usually from the back, as women. However, ambiguity is one of the strengths of her work. Curtiss puts us between a rock and a hard place and challenges our own ideas of hegemony, typification and status symbols. In this way she places culture and consumption as central issues to define femininity (or not) and our relationship with our body, through a cinematic and dreamlike aesthetic, but always referring to everyday life.

            The rise of her popularity in recent years has been explosive, with auction sales multiplying several times her initial value. She has taken part in exhibitions and art residencies in countries such as Mexico, Italy, Korea and Greece. Curtiss is currently represented by Anton Kern Gallery in the United States and White Cube Gallery in Europe.