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Artist: Julien Audebert

Follow the light.
Caravaggio would have “come into the world to destroy painting”, in the eyes of Poussin. Has Julien Audebert stepped into the 21st century to destroy its images? In the 17st century, to destroy implied tearing an eye out and its obvious symptom, Tenebrism. Our 21st century isn’t less torn apart by its fake-true images. SIG P210 in hand, aiming for a copper plate (40x40 cm), the worthy epigone of the Tenebrous shoots twice before his brush strikes the faces of his close ones around the bullet marks. Could he have mastered frenzier fire, or smoother chiaroscuro in the manner of Rembrandt? One or two millimeters of copper left untouched around the hollow created by the shots to catch the light —we are spellbound. A face’s entire life expressed on a minute fraction of surface between a black hole and strikes of paint. La nuit du monde (The World’s Night) series could thus be reworded: “You thought you were looking at a portrait, you now find yourself sinking into the infinite shimmer of the world’s boundless memory! Let’s follow the light of First Fire.“ An image made up of approximately 125 photograms taken from reports on cavern dig.
Men learned how to tame fire in these very caverns while others managed to steal it, today it’s ready to blind us away anywhere we can’t see it. Expert in the most intricate techniques, Julien Audebert never shows them. Looking beyond the surface of a perfect icon of light, we cannot but see destruction. He chooses, cuts, combines and edits these photograms to make a single image out of them, one that doesn’t exist. This image is created in order to obtain an analogue film shot whose quality is 5 times higher than the best digital resolution. It is projected thanks to a powerful overhead projector. The cavern is where sensibility was first sensed. Here you can appreciate the depth of a surface crippled with obscurities. Such is the prize of an unfathomable present for the viewer. Julien Audebert’s art is but shining and vibrant in the electricity of now. To follow its light is to experience memory only to come back to the only liveable present —stepping back into the present of what you see.

—Corinne Rondeau, 2023
Translation: Emilie Lecatre, 2023