Julie Monot 
Julie Monot, Firefly 
Julie Monot, Unicellulaires 
Julie Monot, Grosse araignée
Julie Monot, Toiled’ araignée 
Julie Monot, Armor Amor, 2021, Crins tubulaires, coton et masque en céramique, 180 x 85 cm 
Julie Monot, Firefly, 2021, Tissu et grès émaillé, 189 x 101 x 28 cm 
Julie Monot, Eat me, 2021, Grès émaillé, 40 x 22 x 11 cm 
Julie Monot, Night Butterfly, 2021, Grès émaillé, 27 x 14 x 9 cm
Julie Monot: Possibly Maybe is on view at Galerie Lefebvre & Fils, Paris
September 9 – October 9, 2021
Lefebvre & Fils Gallery is pleased to announce the first solo-show of Julie MONOT at the gallery, curated by Anissa TOUATI, work realised at The Residency in Versailles. “Possibly, Maybe” is about a song, a journey through the vagaries of love: from the excitement of the adventure’s beginnings to its overwhelming disappointment. “Possibly, Maybe” is above all an open formula that maintains a space of uncertainty where the artist, Julie Monot, sees the idea of doubt as a recurring question. Doubt becomes the mental space of possibilities, within which the mixture of History with a capital H and narratives involves the idea of fiction, tales, myths and symbols.
At the Lefebvre et Fils gallery, Monot gradually transports us into a reverie, a strange drift into a murky universe where our sensitivity would be different. An affectivity that would allow us to face our fear of death and transformation.
Julie Monot has a fascination with fabulous animals, the fruit of an unconscious mixture of desires and anguish: “the figure of the monster speaks of the world, of the look I have on this world where everything must be beautiful and pleasant. But, we are not in a place which is only pleasant. This is what makes it beautiful, sensitive, nuanced, impactful. I am drawn to the space between dread and dream. I’m looking for figures that don’t look like me, that have more roughness. “
Julie Monot could take the form of Baba Yaga, this famous witch found in Slavic countries: a primitive mother nature at the same time guardian of day and night, of life and death, the essence and the mystery of nature itself. The titles of his works reflect this: “Who is this”, “Eat me”, “Falling Cat”, “Snaky”, “Parano”, “Possibly Maybe”, “Vampyr”, “Night butterflies”, “Snaky”, “The Three Graces”, “Tarantula”, “Spider”. Like a set of masks, which can be found on each of the walls of the gallery, where it would be possible to be someone else, to reinvent and change. The exhibition thus takes place in an intermediate zone of the experience, to which inner reality and outer life contribute together. A “potential space” between the individual and the environment in which the artist invites us to enter. A space where imaginative play, often from childhood, forms the bridge between two worlds.
As a child, Julie Monot spoke to the mountains, incanted to make the rain fall, invented animist stories. She was fascinated by a universe she had no access to. In order to achieve this, the artist is interested in the making of an object / work capable of having a mobile status between a work and a costume, for example. For her, the idea of transformation and activation is almost an antithesis in the case of the materiality of ceramics. Indeed, the latter supposes the modeling of the flexible earth, then the fixing test of the fire. For the artist, this is certainly where the challenge of this exhibition lies: how to make ceramic objects that can tend towards a moving potential of transformation and performativity.
In the exhibition “Possibly Maybe”, by Julie Monot, dreams and fantasies are the compasses of our psyche and direct us towards buried truths. The magic of her work lies in her representations of the imagination, dreams and fantasy and, ultimately, art as sources of resilience and perseverance. One extreme often brings out the opposite extreme; there is no light without shadow; from one thing emerges its opposite.
Text by Anissa TOUATI
Julie Monot graduated with a BA in Visual Arts at the HEAD of Geneva (2017) and an MA in Visual Arts at ECAL Lausanne (2019). Her artistic practice moves between different mediums such as performances,installations,sculptures and videos. Her research focuses on, among other things, the borderline zones of bodily exteriority and its modes of representation.The notion of the figure is part of her specific interests, for its polysemic and vigour characteristics, but above all because it allows a figurative and critical space on our social constructions. Accessories of transformation, costumes, prosthesis, corporal « furnitures” and objects related to this praxis are part of her daily reflections.
Contact
lefebvreetfils@gmail.com
Galerie Lefebvre & Fils
24, rue du bac – 75007
Paris
Copyright Benoit Fougeirol. Courtesy of Julie Monot and Galerie Lefebvre et Fils
