“In my images, I enjoy the complementarity of darkness and humour, the uncanny and the mundane, grotesque shapes and vivid colours.” — Julie Curtiss
Best known for her highly stylised, bold, and neo-surrealist compositions, Julie Curtiss is one of the most exciting artists working today. Rendered in her signature graphic style, Spring is a brilliant example of Curtiss’s mesmerising and hypnotic practice. Often implementing faceless and fragmented women within her compositions, the present work features an anonymous and mysterious figure with her back turned against the viewer. Swept up in an eerily dreamscape such as Spring, Curtiss entices the audience with her painterly technique and encourages them to interpret beyond what they are looking at.
Cropping the image abruptly on the top and the bottom, Curtiss creates a sense of ambiguity and intrigue using her signature swirls and rendering crisp outlines and saturated colours. Curtiss is particularly interested in human hair as she sees it as an amorphous part of us that would continue to exist after we are deceased. Painting the hair is a repetitive, appealing, and hypnotic process for Curtiss. For her, hair carries cultural and personal importance. In Spring, the hair is braided in a unique style as Curtiss suggests that it is 'a sexual asset' for women. Curtiss says that 'what’s at the heart of my interest is how nature and culture relate, the balance between our wild side and our domesticated side.'i
Based in Brooklyn, New York, Julie Curtiss received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts from l’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Art. In recent years, she has been honoured with shows at the White Cube Gallery in London (2021), and Anton Kern Gallery in New York (2020, 2019). More importantly, Curtiss is currently showing her first exhibition in Greater China Bitter Apples at the White Cube Gallery in Hong Kong. This presents Spring as an exciting work to be offered at auction this season.