July Ancel

b. 1984 France

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

July Ancel narrate by Olivier Kaeppelin (Famous French curator)

Une Sarabande

July Ancel invites the viewer to take part in a slow but incessant dance. The material she works with is movement. It is conveyed by and constructed with color : reds, greens and blues. It is their interplay, variations, and superpositions that create the sensation of being transported by the displacements and vortexes. And their lines bring them to the surface of the canvas. They can be very light, and broken like threads that escape from us and which we subsequently grasp. We follow their paths. They form a geography whose meaning is expressed by pleasure, uncertainty, and wandering lines. 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.

She defines the viewer’s presence and metamorphoses. It is not due to the power of substance alone. Paradoxically, the latter could be an obstacle to the principle of vitality she is seeking. Like Bram Van Velde, she attempts to traverse the plane before her. This attempt is always threatened by failure if the painting’s construction overrides the painting’s poetry. July Ancel shares this approach to painting: the ‘real’ ever stimulated by the virtual. Its forms and spaces are never motionless thanks to the lines that bring them to life or outline them, but thanks to the transparency that connects them with one another. The range of colours she has been using over recent years has become lighter, like that of Ferdinand Hödler and Fabrice Hyber, and this brings the background into the foreground. These planes merge thanks to a very subtle use of light, which accentuates the clear presence of a playful and joyous cosmos, in which potential narratives intrigue the viewer–figures inspired by Latin-American, Asian, and Greek cultures. They represent so many ‘doors’ that embrace ambivalent and diaphanous fantasies, as in the work of the artist Dado. In July Ancel’s oeuvre a veil is placed over an image and over another, and these are even more present than the forms they invite the viewer to discern.

It is the basis for their identity and nature.They are created through a combination of pictorial layers, membranes, and successive screens that never quite reveal everything, to prompt the viewer ’s curiosity. They invite the viewer ’s eye to roam like a scout who, through sensations, sees the space being constantly modified. It is never enclosed but rather reaches out beyond the picture, as might an overflowing spring. Through her use of colour, composition, and the imaginary power of her drawings, July Ancel’s painting challenges the world’s opacity and is reminiscent of Philippe Jaccottet’s notebooks ‘(…) One moment of complete forgetting and all the screens, one behind the other, become transparent so that you can perceive clarity to its very depths, as far as the eye can see; and at the same time everything becomes weightless. Thus does the soul truly become a bird.

– Olivier Kaeppelin

Born in Nice, France in 1984.

Live and work presently in Paris.

2010 Higher diploma in plastic arts of Beaux-Arts de Paris

2010 graduated from école nationale des beaux-arts de Paris

Solo Exhibitions

2019 On the way, Philippe Staib gallery, Shanghai, China
2018 La Subasta, Casa Belin, San Rafael, Mexique
2017 Mythologies, Philippe Staib gallery, Shanghai, China
2016 KhaoYai, Sofia gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
2015 Azur et cendres, Philippe Staib gallery, Shanghai, China
2014 34 parallèle, Dragon Hotel, Hangzhou, China
2013 Une Hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps, Yishu8, Beijing, China
2012 Hercule, Galerie Premier Regard, Paris, France

Group Exhibitions

2023 ART TAIPEI
2021 Nature borders (curated by Christophe Delavault), Maison-atelier d’André Lurçat, Sceaux, France
2021 Estivales de Sceaux (curated by Christophe Delavault), Sceaux, France
2020 Caresser les murs (curated by Christophe Delavault), Courbevoie, France
2019 I am not nostaljik, you are nostalgic (curated by Fiona Vilmer), Istanbul, Turkey
2017 Choses confidentielles, Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai, China
2016 Les 15 ans de Premier Regard (curated by Marc Donnadieu), Paris, France
2014 Le the & le vin – Galerie des Galeries (curated by Jean-Paul Desroches), Paris, France
2011 15 Prix Antoine Marin, Galerie Julio Gonzalez, Arcueil, France
2011 Les 10 ans de Premier Regard, Bastille Center Design, Paris, France