Juliette Sturlèse
b. 1989, France
Born in Paris in 1989, Juliette Sturlèse lives and works between Berlin, Germany and Sheffield, UK. An interest in the transportive capacities of colour, shape, and light guide the artist’s practice, which takes the form of large-scale abstract paintings rendered with oil and beeswax. Sturlèse is interested in the non-linear poetics of memory, particularly how the past bubbles into the future, and how sensory experience maps the parameters of personal/interior worlds onto shared/external worlds.
Placing a symbolic emphasis on colour, Sturlèse’s work acts as a cosmic portal into loose associations and landscapes of the mind. Equally meditative and stimulating, her works immediately engage the viewer with their size and vibrancy. Their imagined compositions channel elements of the cosmological, the ecological, and the feminine, possessing a cheeky sensuality that’s bristling with liveness. Through a precise painting process that cultivates dense, texturized colour fields through the application of beeswax, Sturlèse’s works appear like self-contained worlds that glow with their own radiance, inviting us deeper into a subconscious space that defies ready explanation or even understanding.
Sturlèse studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, and at the Kunsthochschule Weißensee in Berlin. From 2017-2019, she was a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation. Sturlèse has exhibited widely across Europe, with recent presentations including solo shows at ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY in London and REITER in Leipzig, as well as several group shows at REITER in Berlin, Kunstraum Konrad in Puschberg, Austria, and Sabine Knust KUNZ in Munich.