Julien Nédélec — À propos — Slash Paris

What should incidentally be underscored in this young artist’s praxis is his ability to move from one medium to another, without the slightest bother or apprehension. It is impossible to pigeonhole Julien Nédélec’s praxis in any one particular medium. In his work, an edition may actually be one sculpture, and a multiple may be a one-off. All so many multi-facetted combinations which tally well with the young man’s bubbling spirit. In the introductory notice for the book Feuilleté (2008), Jérôme Dupeyrat pointed out that Julien Nédélec “prefers to offer answers to questions that are not asked”. It would be hard to find a better formula than that. Lignes de train is a perfect illustration. In this book, which was published in 2011, the artist had fun freehand drawing horizontal lines in a notebook on the Rennes/Nantes train ride, thereby offering a travel narrative that is, at the very least, off-kilter, and a topographical survey of the railway line between Rennes and Nantes, i.e. two proposals that are as useless as they are delightful! And when he proudly announces that Carré égal triangle—from the name of his exhibition at the ACDC gallery in 2011—, one wants just one thing, which is to believe him, even if we do not really know what he is trying to signify with this improbable equation.