Julien Deiss „Die Welt von Oben – Spuren Relikte Trophäen der Jagd”

In the Kunstraum-Unten, located in the intermediate level of the Bochum subway station Schauspielhaus, Düsseldorf artist Julien Deiss presents his new exhibition titled "The World from Above - Traces Relics Trophies of the Hunt," infused with the ironic touch of an expedition documentary.

The 30-year-old artist from Düsseldorf has committed to representational painting from an early age. Piece by piece, the paintings of Julien Deiss lie, stand, and hang in the Kunstraum-Unten, seemingly simple, entirely for ocular enjoyment. His subjects are not unusual: people, animals, everyday objects; what makes them intriguing is the way they are assembled, creating images that do not exist in reality. Julien Deiss invites the viewer into a one-way street, at the end of which they become aware of how submissive the act of seeing is in relation to predefined patterns.

Laughing, the viewer hears the irony behind them as they begin their way back, suddenly conjuring inner images: surreal encounters that momentarily fall at their feet. At that moment, they find themselves on the same path that the artist had to traverse to discover these images. "When one layer of paint follows another, ... I can reach a state through my work where I cast a trawl net into the mud of the unconscious, like from a fishing trawler. What gets caught is painted. In this way, souls, memories, and dream motifs emerge, where the past, present, and future converge. While the individual scenes can still be described separately, they often elude any interpretation as a whole." (Julien Deiss)

Julien Deiss was born in Düsseldorf in 1983. Since 2006, he has been studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, among others with Markus Lüpertz and Reinhold Braun. Currently, Deiss lives and works in Denmark during a semester off.