“What I am trying to convey to you is more mysterious; it is entwined in the very roots of being, in the impalpable source of sensations.” (Cézanne)
French-German artist, born in 1972. Lives and works between Paris and Valencia.
A set designer in Paris since 1999, after having completed literary studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Julia is also a self-taught multidisciplinary artist.
After a long period of creating abstract paintings on plexiglass, she adopted a hyperrealist style with her Symptômes series of large-scale portraits.
They depict isolated individuals, sometimes confined under water or enveloped in cold vapour, often covered in lesions. The atmosphere is disturbing, unsettling, violent and yet full of energy and spirit. The figures seem to come from beyond, bewitching and catching the eye, devouring the space.
The focus in this work is the individual, between the physical representation on the one hand and the depths of the soul with its scars on the other:
“My painting is a painting of sensations, and I want the viewer when looking at the individual represented, to subtly feel a tiny part of the hidden soul and this vital energy which traverses it, as well as morbid symptoms, scars, a strange moment suspended between life and death.”
A little later, with Silverscreens, Julia returns to abstraction, large canvases on which we can make out vibrant elements attempting to emerge from behind the metal surfaces. Playing on the effects of erasure, she creates a constant duality between appearance and disappearance.
Her series of photographic work Acqua expresses the same mysterious sensations as her paintings.
Jungle fever, her most recent series of paintings depicts quivering jungle vegetation which appears to be burning or turning to liquid. Once again, the artist creates a dense, disturbing and menacing atmosphere.
As in all her work, basic elements such as liquid, air and fire come together and evoke the coexistence of life and death.
Julia Tiemann’s works are intentionally ambiguous and are a response to the anxieties and dreams intrinsic to the viewer. The result is a dichotomy which elicits attraction or repulsion in the eye of the onlooker.