Julien Friedler

Julien Friedler (Brussels, 1950) is a singular figure in the panorama of contemporary art. The literary past, the training as a psychoanalyst, the love for philosophy and the writing of various erudite works, as well as his taste for travel and for the encounter with different and often distant realities have built the basis of a labyrinthine thought that sees in the visual arts an emblematic realization hypothesis. Paintings, sculptures, installations are the mouthpieces of a full imaginary, and constitute the visible signs of a mythical truth that the artist develops through very personal themes.
The Belgian artist is the bearer of a humanist vision, outlined through the works but also with a sharing activity that he carries out through Spirit of Boz, an association born to establish - practicing oral, literary, pictorial and creative expression in general - exchanges and links, thus constituting a community of thoughts and testimonies on individual and collective realities, coming from various places in the world. This reality expresses the urgency to reconcile action and contemplation, with the aim of promoting a humanist and cathartic thought. His universe, in permanent evolution, involves opposing facets, one of collective inspiration, the other of individual meditation. It is to this latter aspect that the pictorial production belongs.
Friedler's art sets in motion sensations, relationships, analysis, and is conceived as an action inclusive of all vital expressions, whether they derive from one's own experience or that of others. His action, consequently, covers multiple aspects and embraces various fields, from literature to philosophy, from sociological analysis to the plastic arts (painting, sculpture). His language involves a pictorial production generated by creative necessity, by the desire for spontaneous and visceral transmission, deriving from the «attempt to discover what constitutes the passionate essence of people». Friedler proceeds in an almost hypnotic way, without the constraint of subjects, of materials used, thus defining a rhythm, an informal way of expression. His expanding energy derives from the capacity for dissociation and introspection that he applies to himself before taking an interest in others, discovering the most intimate motivations in the other. A journey to explore the human soul in its atavistic and universal complexity.