Julien Wolf is a French painter born in 1981 in Strasbourg.

In 2007, he graduated DNSEP from the Art section at the Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg.

His oil painting on canvas is wild and naive. It represents isolated individuals or processions of mobile and unstable characters using colors that were initially frank but lately more subtle, in half-tones.

His creations, very expressive, virulent and raw are at the origin of the title of the exhibition “Raw” at the Galerie Claire Corcia.

His frenetic and sensual works are nourished by the materiality of oil paint, shiny and impasto, which catches the light and recalls, in the all-over filling of the canvas, the almost abstract water lilies of Claude Monet.

This firework of colors and materials asserts the very materiality of painting which cannot be shunned here, for our greatest pleasure. Also Julien Wolf flirts with abstraction by practicing oil painting all over the entire surface of the canvas, while celebrating the carnivorous and carnal figurative aspect of his characters at the limit of the ‘animality.

In these bacchanalian scenes, of spells or football scrums, the most total frenzy seizes the characters and the spectator is invited to take part in this deployment of collective madness. All that’s missing is the sound of loud voices, cries or vociferations that remain to be imagined because Julien Wolf’s painting is not sound!

This communicative frenzy wins the heart and brain of the spectator who would like to join these scenes of unbridled and lively jubilation.

“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.

However, the levity was not feigned: it is a smile, a politeness, that Julien Wolf addresses to his fears and to ours. » Régis Jaulin 2023.

 

2019
Raw, Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris

2018
Week-End en Résidence, Paris

2017
Espace Germinal, Fosses
Université de Rouen – Galerie Duchoze, Rouen

2016
Galerie 75, Rouen

2015
L’Atelier – Espace Arts Plastiques, Mitry-Mory
Galerie Espace 13, Mur-De-Barrez
Galerie 75,Rouen
Galerie Espace Eqart, Marciac

2014
Galerie Virginie Barrou Planquart,Paris

2019
L’Atelier – Espace Arts Plastiques – Un pluriel bien singulier, Mitry-Mory
SALON COMPARAISON – Paris

2018 : SALON COMPARAISON – Paris



2018
BIENNALE 109, Paris



2017
MAC PARIS, Paris
PASSAGE A L’ART – Cherbourg-en-Cotentin



2016
ARTCITE,Fontenay-Sous-Bois
Galerie Duchoze, Rouen
Dessins Outsider – Galerie Lieu 37, Paris
Galerie de l’Echarpe – Espace Eqart, Toulouse
Galerie Adada,Saint-Denis
Espace Eqart, Marciac

2015
Galerie Duchoze, Rouen
MAC PARIS, Paris
OUTSIDER ART FAIR – Espace Eqart, Paris



2014
MAC PARIS, Paris
AFFORDABLE ART FAIR – Galerie Virginie Barrou Planquart, Londres
After Puls’Art – Moulinsart, Le Mans

2013
ST’ART – Galerie Virginie Barrou Planquart, Strasbourg
AFFORDABLE ART FAIR – Galerie Virginie Barrou Planquart, Bruxelles
AFFORDABLE ART FAIR – Galerie Virginie Barrou Planquart, Londres
AFFORDABLE ART FAIR – Galerie Virginie Barrou Planquart, New-York
PULS’ART, Le Mans



2012
Performance – Halle-St-Pierre – Ensemble Carpe Diem, Paris
ST’ART – Galerie Virginie Barrou Planquart, Strasbourg



2011
Scénographie picturale – Théâtre de l’Athénée – Ensemble Carpe Diem, Paris



2010
Résidence, Berlin



2009
Performance – Villa Sainte Cécile – Ensemble Carpe Diem, La Côte-Saint-André