Julien Legars
University: Aix en Provence High Art School
Graduation Year: 2007
New Blood Art Statement
"For Julien Legars, the concepts of beauty and ugliness serve as the central forces of inspiration within his work. Born in France in 1982, Legars lives and works in Rouen, where he forged a visual language centered on the body. Legars’ work aims to challenge our understanding of beauty, and what it means for a body to be beautiful. He takes on this challenge mainly by alternating between plastic productions and figurative paintings. In more recent years, his work has focused on the ideas of disability, monstrosity, sexuality, and gender, and how these concepts are universal yet often taboo." (for Interiors Magazine – 2015).
Artist Statement
Like a windows on bodies. My painting, like my objects have common idea of showing the body, beautiful or ugly according to our cultures and practices but where the painted material, even thin dominates what is seen. Pieces of our bodies painted in very large formats, or entire body on small, I put my characters en scene so as to highlight the details of a situation. The spectator look a specific situation, an intimate moment. He is placed in the role of voyeur, behind the painter's window. The material, texture of my paintings is paramount. Thin or thick, painted material is intimately linked to the model, and the situation of painting. I work mainly oil painting and watercolor. I also created sculptures using various materials, while keeping the body as a thread.