An impetious and playful declaration
by Smaranda Olcese
June 2013by Smaranda Olcese
First published on http://toutelaculture.com/
From embroidery to ink drawings, there is a recognizable energy full of playfulness, humour and
impetuousness that pervades throughout Julie Navarro's artworks, which also include large format
oils and acrylics.
The galerie du Buisson, on the gentle hills of Belleville, is hosting her solo exhibition. Here the world
is to be read through eyes with long green lashes, as in the old-fashioned black and white
photographic portrait onto which the artist has embroidered. The forms appear to be imbued with
great simplicity. They are carried by her gesture with affirmation and gusto, on the cusp of
abstraction, to the sound Chopin, magnifying their soft and at times sensual charge.
Julie Navarro's embroideries capture bodies from various extraordinary perspectives, falling or flying,
unleashed, freed from the weave of the industrial fabric. Yet the stitches are meticulous and tight,
giving more depth to the material in a manner that is quasi sculptural in parts. The seductive power
of these works is immediate. She toys with the absurd and the obsessive.
The constraining rigour of the graph paper and the algorithmic discipline of the musical scores
which are also amongst the artist's favoured mediums are constantly subjected to the passionate
overflow of ink that draws thick, velvety and mischievous lines that sometimes take the surprising
shape of manga which are on the verge of abstraction. Thus this recent series has a maternal
generosity, the same huddled rounded silhouette, seen from different viewpoints that challenges
the tension of the blank page. Since the drawings in the La nuit rêvée (The Dreamlike Night) series
carried the silent music contained in Chopin's scores, every visitor is encouraged to imagine the
secret twist that spurs the other pieces. What transpires in this tale is the incentive towards a much
needed refocussing that draws us to an essential core that crystallises emotion and makes primal
forces audible.
Last but not least, colour beams forth on the canvases which are akin to internal cartographies or
interior landscapes. All the paintings shown at the galerie du Buisson seem to be introducing a new
period. Beyond the brushstrokes, scrapings, erasures, glazing, framed in pastel colours, time becomes
the artist's main ally in the quest for secret equilibriums on the coloured surfaces. The bright intensity
of an intervention with spray paint makes the incredible density of the material electric. A key statement
painting, Comme je vous voie (As I see you), could summarise alone the strength of this work which
must be watched from now on.
Yves Michaud
Paris, 2 April 2013