Desire/Palace. Like the work of photographer, videographer and performance artist, Julie Coulon,
these two words exist between two languages and demand no translation. For her artist residency
with The Invisible Dog Art Center, she brings together a fresh but highly evocative and referential
body of work that feels right at home in New York City.
Formed at the fine arts school of Paris (Beaux-Arts de Paris), she was particularly marked by a se-
mester abroad at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC. Her work travels well because it navigates
the near-global motifs of classic cinema, multiple media, numerous registers and the canonical
emotional experiences that mark our lives; namely, falling in love. Cinematic tropes: the cowboy,
the sports car, the boxer, the star-crossed lovers...mingle almost to the point of montage to render
Coulon’s still images akin to adaptations of classic movies. Between photo and video, the cine-
matic quality of this show is only heightened. The color schemes, casting, posing and rapport that
Coulon cultivates with her subjects brings the 1970’s back to life while revealing a highly erudite
sensibility. Finally, prepare yourself for a kiss. Inspired by the collaborations of artist couples, Cou-
lon makes her images with love. Welcome to Desire Palace at the Picto Loft (Brooklyn, NY) until
May 24th, 2024.
Ask Coulon why she loves New York, and the inspirations that nourish her work are at your finger-
tips. In the summer of 2022, Coulon made a video featuring two world champions of Thai boxing
on a Lower East Side rooftop, perceiving the boxers as symbolic of the stereotypical New Yorker.
From an aesthetic and archetypal standpoint, the New Yorker is like a boxer who hustles and pu-
shes the boundaries until they arrive at a culminant moment that leads to their glory. Believing
that Coulon really regards every New Yorker as starring in their own movie, chasing a unique and
unattainable dream, it is undeniable that these images are made with love. Two years later, and as
part of the Invisible Dog artist residency, Coulon continues to cultivate a rapport with her subjects
that navigates their cultural and geographic distances. These are the images of the boxer from
the perspective of a French photographer, whose own regard reveals tropes which prove to be
somewhat transcendent.
With a characteristic self awareness and mirth, Coulon tells me about her visions for exhibiting her
work: “when I do a show it’s always in a weird place.” And this time? “This photo gallery is turned
into a loft desire palace.” What significance does the location in which you show have for you,
Julie? “When I do photos in places, I choose them because they are made of images. They belong
between reality and fiction.” In a marriage between the work of art (the image) and the context
in which it is both made and seen, Julie’s body of work blurs the lines between “real” life, and the
movies.
Julie Coulon
April 26-May 24 2024 at the Picto Loft, Brooklyn New York
Julie Coulon interrogates the degree to which our shared experiences are lived through the lens
of our cinematic points of reference. How do you represent a reality made of fictions? For Coulon,
it is by facing the blurry line between these two terms. Unafraid of the gray area in between re-
presentation and abstraction, mimesis and documentation, these works are a treat for the eye and
somewhat recognizable to our visual indexes.
The aesthetic of Cassevetes’ cinema stimulated much of Coulon’s early images. In her own words,
“there is no image of love that couldn’t be pulled from a Cassavetes film.” But with a distinctly fe-
minist and psychological sensibility, Coulon queers the tropes of cinema both in her selection of
her subjects and her implication and accountability in the work. In the striking images she made in
an abandoned industrial facility outside of Paris, the evidence of staging, posing and lighting are
abundant.
While these images are cinematic, general, and glossy, the tenderness of her subjects’ embrace,
two men dressed in flashy, 70’s tank tops with mop top flyaway bangs, brings the viewer back into
the image. A similarly self-reflexive effect can be found in the movie theater series, in which two
young women kiss submerged in darkness, their faces illuminated as if by a movie screen, their
embodiment inflected by the kisses we are used to seeing on-screen. Film theorists like Laura
Mulvey could comment on the scopophilic quality of filmmaking and spectatorship; perhaps more
so on the voyeuristic gesture of witnessing an intimate embrace. Here, the spectator is you and
Julie – the photographer herself. Coulon’s depictions of the iconic movie kiss do not objectify her
subjects; rather, they are a commentary upon our shared aesthetic imaginary.
While the objectifying gaze renders its subject static, it attempts to fix it, Coulon works with mo-
vement. A videographer and performance artist (in addition to her photography practice), most re-
cently Coulon showed a sound installation, which she presented live to a group of friends. Coulon
then photographed the performance of their reactions in which she takes part. The multivalent,
semi-autobiographical project, which celebrates the bubblegum girlhood of a Sofia Coppola film,
reveals the intimacy of Coulon’s work. Rather than objectifying her subjects, or reducing them to
tropes and archetypes possible in cinema, Coulon walks among them. As in Coulon’s first video
project, “Kissing in a Cabriolet” (a video featuring a couple kissing for 10 minutes in a darkened
tunnel), and “Goodbye to All” (she cast a theater-trained actor to perform a text on New York City
by Joan Didion), cinematic influences frolic in contemporary contexts.
Dynamically referential (the viewer can’t ignore the series shot on Sergio Leone’s film sets in Sou-
thern Spain, representing at once the artist’s fascination with the aesthetics of iconic cinema, and
her emphasis on transnational cultural exchange), Coulon’s photographs are not strictly still either:
sometimes they move. Like in the movies, lovers kiss in convertible sports cars. The boxer bounces
back and forth across the urban landscape. The cowboys fidget and pose in their color-coded get-
ups. Alongside the photographer’s interest in movement on the levels of content and form, the
subjects are also deeply embedded in their setting.
Stella Sappington
