Julien Heintz, (b.1997) is a fifth year student at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in James Rielly’s studio.

With working predominantly oil painting, he seeks the ambiguity between abstraction and figuration. The preparation of the canvas has a particular significance to him. The surface is approached as a unique material which he prepares with a gesso made of marble powder, rabbit skin glue and water. This preparation, which is then sanded, gives the canvas a smooth, hard and porous aspect, almost as fine as a sheet of paper, which make it a unique and fragile object.

It is this fragility that pushes him to apprehend the surface on which he paints in a singular way, to and qualities. “I am inspired by Japanese craftsmanship. This form of devotion to the manufacturing process fascinates me. In my own work what surrounds me is important: my space, the quality of the materials and the tools I use. I take a lot of time to choose my raw pigments and to grind them. I think I have a more physical than intellectual approach to painting.”

Julien Heintz paints characters whose faces, framed in a tight shot, seem to be frozen in a different space-time. Their features seem on the verge of disappearing, absorbed by the surface of the canvas, thus testing the persistence of memories and their associated emotional charge. In front of these figures, whose evanescent gaze slips away, the spectator is led to focus his attention on the work. The fact that the importance of the subject is minimized and that only backgrounds are painted that give no information about their context is a way for Julien Heintz to exalt the abstract quality of his painting.