The first in a series of books dedicated to Jean Jullien's paintings, this book uses paper formats to contrast the artist's preparatory notebooks with exhibition views of his paintings of Mediterranean environments.
"Mermed" is the first chapter of an artistic odyssey which sees Jean Jullien make a stopover at the Galerie Masurel.
Charged with a profound emotional dimension, his paintings' itinerary starts out in the Bigouden region. It is these lands that the artists
holds dear which take shape here through their palette of colours and their natural elements. The journey continues along the coast of the Mediterranean,
through France, Italy and Greece. The sea gradually becomes a projection screen for an imaginary world of shared forms of knowledge and mythology.
As we continue on our way, we strike out towards a symbolic elsewhere. We can make out references to ancient Greece and its civilisation,
which Jean Jullien draws on to connect past and present.
Moving between reproductions of sketchbook pages and paintings, we travel through the pages of the book in the company of the artist
and his interpretations of the worlds he discovers, contemplates or dreams up.
A discussion with Martin Bethenod provides an insight into the artist's interests and methods, in particular the link between drawing
and painting in his work.
Jean Jullien (born 1983) is a French artist living and working in Paris. Originally from Nantes, he graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2008 and the Royal College of Art in 2010. Jullien's creative output ranges from painting, illustration, installation, photography and video, to costumes, books, posters and clothing. He has shown work around the world with museums and galleries in Paris, London, Brussels, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Tokyo, Seoul, Melbourne, Singapore and more. His work appears in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Guardian, National Geographic, SZ Magazin, Télérama, and more, and he has collaborated with multiple global brands. In 2011, Jean Jullien and his brother Nico founded Jullien Brothers, a duo specialized in moving image. In 2016 he launched NouNou with Jae Huh, a Korean based label producing a range of products featuring the artist's distinctive visuals.
