Julie Curtiss

I am interested in nuances, in complexity, in the in-between, in complementarity.
—Julie Curtiss

Julie Curtiss reveals the hidden strangeness of familiar things, depicting scenes in which banality coexists with enigma, inanimate objects become animate, and humanity’s animal nature is disclosed. Painting in a graphic style with vibrant colors, she often positions fragmented or isolated figures in front of monochrome backdrops or in schematic urban or suburban settings, highlighting the alluring, grotesque, and paradoxical aspects of contemporary life. Her subjects typically have blank, masked, or hidden features, their anonymity reinforcing the artist’s interest in archetypes, especially those around femininity.

Born in Paris in 1982, Curtiss frequented the city’s museums from a young age. She received her BA and MFA from l’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and participated in exchange programs at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, Germany, in 2004, and the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005 and 2006, the latter made possible by the 2004 Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy Young Artist Award. During her time in Chicago, Curtiss became fascinated by American culture. After graduating in 2006, she lived in Tokyo for a year before moving to New York. As she developed her practice, Curtiss found affinities with the Chicago Imagists, a group of artists including Roger Brown, Gladys Nilsson, Christina Ramberg, Ray Yoshida, and others who emerged in the mid-1960s and engaged with Surrealism, popular culture, and the work of self-taught artists.