JULY ANCEL

It is her large drawings dominated by the colour blue that–through their lines and the technique of rubbing, erasing, interruption, and resumption– form amazing erased and dynamic areas. These areas are those of an artist who chooses to draw on her experience and express the joy of following ‘paths that lead nowhere’. They give viewers a chance to immerse themselves in a world characterised by emotion.

July Ancel is seeking this dynamism as it enables the emergence and existence of indefinable pure movement or, on the contrary, bodies that have an ‘animal’ quality, embraces seeking effusion, and figures of giants and monster-gods. The viewer’s perception changes scale. The scale of the heads, ovals that–as in Giorgio De Chirico’s work–, are suspended over the landscape until they merge with symbols resembling insects, lost in the midst of a people composed of lines, and creatures that resemble those of Roberto Matta, which, via their variations, bring the entire surface to life with continuous pulsations.

Is this question of scale purely pictorial, solely a question of substance and movement, or, on the contrary, does it call forth apparitions, associations, and memory images, which, by establishing dialogues, reconnect with ‘sky landscapes’, horizon lines, and the shifting lines of abysses and summits? July Ancel’s paintings capture the interlacing and interlocking of the living world, obtained via the use of many ingredients and technical skills (casein, oil, pigments, and inks) that form the basis of the painter’s work. She never paints objects or the reality of the world, but rather the ‘pulsations’ that make them sources of energy.

July born in Nice in 1984, graduated with Higher diploma in plastic arts of Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Text courtesy Olivier Kaeppelin, Gin Huang Gallery