This catalogue provides a set of photographs and drawings by the artist, as well as documents and installation views that reflect the obsessions of Carreyn, from the female body and pop occultism to symbolism and surrealism.
For an event at the the Frac Champagne-Ardenne (France) artist took over all the exhibition space and specially devised an installation bringing together almost 100 works on paper. Using very varied production techniques and presentation methods, the artist managed to create an immersive work which completely plunged visitors into a very personal world. Julien Carreyn is particularly interested by ancient and/or rudi mentary reproduction techniques, and favors drawing as a creative process to try and generate a new language. Bulimic and erudite, it is through the blending of many different references that he produces works with a phonily old-fashioned look, mixing for instance abstraction with figuration, quoting Bresson's films, calling to mind Man Ray's stance towards eroticism, appropriating surrealist themes, and associating a certain frag mented realism with subconscious images and dreams.
Published following Julien Carreyn's solo show at the Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, from May 13 to August 14, 2011.
Born in 1973 in Angers,
Julien Carreyn lives and works in Paris.
