Julia Huteau: Selected works, 2020-2024
Luminance
An additive, measurable magnitude, a sculpture colored by the play of moving light.
This principle of photography brings together the major components of the Luminance project: How much light for how long?
Luminance is first and foremost a volume, an extruded clay form that stretches. It’s a rhythm, a temporality, an expanse that materializes. Is time a movement in space, an avatar in duration ? Physicist and philosopher Étienne Klein poses this and other temporal concepts. The Luminance project is a proposal for the figuration of duration, an opportunity to think about and observe other phenomena.
It’s also about exploring color through the movement of light. To question the relationship between a volume and its environment. Adding light waves to raw
ceramic elements accentuates the movement created and initiated by the clay paste. The additive synthesis of light increases volume: the form becomes animated,
moving further away from the object. It will give us access to new areas of sensibility, and allow other questions to emerge. The Luminance research project is an adventure. It seeks to make time visible through matter, to illuminate it in a different way and make it visible: these are movements in space that open up new horizons.
Ensembles
“Ensembles” is a sculptural proposition that demands action (participation) from the audience. The composed form is invented as it goes along, in a state of constant transformation. My aim is to make dense, sonorous elements visible and easy to manipulate. The interplay of colors and materials, depending on the composition of the glazes, offers rich and diverse textures. Their shine, satin or matte finish, and density invite us to enjoy a generous, gourmet experience. The public composes, constructs, arranges, searches, conceives or improvises according to their disposition. “Ensembles” allows them to slow down and create their own scenario. What spaces will there be between the colours?
Fragments
A parallel project to the Luminance sculpture was presented during the one-person exhibition Vrouge at Galerie Tator (Lyon) between November 2022 and January 2023. The structure, the composition of slices of clay and the play of light, comprise the artistic project «Fragments».
Rebound
I chose to question our relationship to reality in a series of works called Rebound. They bring together two realities, virtual and material. Initially, Rebounds are digital drawings. Virtual reality offers a new kind of physical freedom in which the body remains involved but in a much lighter way. Thanks to this creative process I temporarily remove the material and physical constraints of clay. This allows fun, surprise, humour, hopping and bouncing, floating, hard and soft and free space around me and that fulfils my curiosity. Only then do strength, movement, and the transformation of matter come into play, these oh-so-familiar shaping gestures. Lastly the randomness of chemistry and physics bring me back to a palpable and truly satisfying world. This new approach helps me superimpose two realities and create pieces which embody just that as they seek to broaden our imagination.
Jump
Plump humour which rebounds
I created these shapes from a vocabulary, ideas that follow me in the process of creation. Comfort and autonomy are shaped with humour and gluttony. The bulges will remind the bright, spontaneous, warm, innocent and generous childhood to those who have experienced it. This is a metaphor of a joyful and comfortable interior. With the Jump sculptures, I don’t propose an exhaustive representation of our world. It’s neither about adventure, nor about discovery. We could see it more like a truce, punctual and necessary, a moment of psychological tranquillity. It will surely give us courage and hope to jump into future vibrant moments.
De l’espace entre les couleurs
Inspired by a sentence from a book by Hubert Reeves (Patience dans l’azur. L’évolution cosmique, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1981), reflects her almost scientific approach to the colors, in which she imposes challenges on herself like « going from yellow to purple or from orange to blue on a surface of 20 centimetres ». The chromatic scale evokes decomposition of the prism of light. Thus, her simple shape vibrates with a new force, a work of great precision.
Aurélie Sécheret, la Revue de la céramique et du verre.
Captions
- Luminance, 2022, Stoneware, light, 300 x 50 x 100 cm
- Luminance, 2024. Exhibition view at the Bourse du Travail (Valence). Ceramics, metal, light. 490 x 120 x 110 cm. Photos by Elodie Jost.
- Ensembles (modular sculpture, 88 interlocking slices), 2023, Variable dimensions. Approx. 90 cm x 90 cm. Extruded stoneware, glazes
- Fragments, 2022, Plaster board, ceramics, projectors and gelatine, 150x150x75x275 cm. Photo copyright: Frédéric Houvert.
- Rebound, 2022, Exhibition at the Fondation Villa Datris. L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (FR). Black sculpture: 55 x 39 x 35 cm. Stoneware, glaze.
- Jump, 2021, Two-part sculptures created at Craft Limoges, 10 x 7 x 7 cm. Porcelain. Photo copyright: Frederick Houvert. Vrouge exhibition at Galerie Tator (Lyon, FR).
- Jump, 2020, porcelain, glaze, 12 x 12 x 17 cm.
- De l’espace entre les couleurs, 2021, porcelain, glaze, 18 x 10 x 10 cm.
De l’espace entre les couleurs, 2020, porcelaine, glaze, 10 x 10 x 13 cm. - Opus, 2020, Black sculpture: 43 x 100 x 70 cm. Stoneware, porcelain, glazes and slips. View of Ouverture exhibition, curator – Alexandre Roccuzzo at l’École d’Art de Riom (FR).
- White Rebound, 2021. 70 x 77 x 68 cm, stoneware, glaze.
- Extérieur exhibition, La Borne (FR), 2023.
