"Between matter and symbol, Julien Claustre makes painting a language: a threshold between the visible and the imaginary."
A contemporary French artist born in Roanne in 1977, Julien Claustre works in painting, drawing and sculpture. A journey through the Himalayas early in life left a lasting imprint on his imagination. At sixteen he entered the École internationale Émile Cohl in Lyon, where he forged a rigorous command of line, then continued his research in Hossegor, on the Atlantic coast, exploring matter and movement. Based in Paris since 2009, he works in oil and mixed media — sculpted reliefs, natural pigments, canvases in transformation — and develops a true "alphabet" of signs and symbols, an intimate codex. Nourished by spirituality and by the history of art, from Leonardo da Vinci to Cézanne and Basquiat, his painting explores the links between reality and imagination, the visible and the invisible. Each work becomes a threshold between vision and dream, inviting the eye to cross the boundary of the known world.