English version
Julien Breton’s art is a cry in silence. Everything is silence. Its movement, the light that cuts through the air, the ephemeral words, the darknessthat envelops it, the evanescent traces of its shadow, the electric colours and the geometry that dissolves into nothingness.
Everything is a cry. He has said: “Le silence écrit. Le silence est cri.” To write in silence is a total immersion in the concentration of each single gesture that finds its expression in the very moment when the camera lens, in a single shot, is imprinted by the complex sum of the artist’s drawing in light. A shot that is transformed into a film with a single frame. A performance lasting several minutes for an image where the artist disappears and only the result of his art remains.
To be present when he undertakes a work is like spying on an alchemist through the keyhole. You remain openmouthed and in silence without knowing where all those gestures, those silent dance steps, are leading to. For the whole duration, what is most impressive is the severe and concentrated gaze of the artist which almost jars with the curves of light he leaves behind him; yet when the work is finished, the gaze disappears and is lost inside the diaphragm of a camera, and all that remains is what earlier had seemed so ephemeral and confused. A ray of light perfectly drawn in the air. A dance between the artist and the landscape. Each of his works results from the complete fusion with the context in which the work develops. The sense of his calligraphy, the colours he uses, the forms and direction of the light, all derive from, and return to, the moment in which they are created. His art is a falling star on which the artist manages to impose discipline and spontaneity, dancing and painting. His works are highly reminiscent of the abstract expressionism and informal art of Georges Mathieu. We feel the same energy, the same jet of colour, the same will to cut into the background with a deep and precise gesture.
But Julien Breton goes a step further towards an aim that is even more openly communicative and cultural. In fact, his art is born from his will to create a semantic bridge between Arabian and Western culture in order to create a universal language that can transmit feelings by going beyond words themselves. But always remaining anchored in calligraphy and, therefore, in the alphabet. His marks are a synthesis of an Arabian and a Western kind of meaning joined together during the development of the work.
He has said that “a white sheet is too limiting. To paint on a canvas, however large, means in any case a limit within which I do not feel myself free to express my whole being. Only light is really infinite. The only limit is the air.” To paraphrase Man Ray – the precursor of light painting – with his art Julien Breton photographs what he does not want to paint and paints what he does not manage to photograph.
Jacopo Perfetti – Art Kitchen/Milan
Julien Breton won a award in light-graff category during the international Urban Arts Awards in 2011 and 2 Bronze Awards to the Dubaï Lynx Awards for the communication campaign « It’s our game »
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