Who is Jules Carp?
JULES CARP
PLASTIC ARTIST
BORN IN GUADALAJARA, JALISCO, MEXICO (1982).
"If you play the game, you pay the price"
JULES CARP
PLASTIC ARTIST
BORN IN GUADALAJARA, JALISCO, MEXICO (1982).
Every color has a spectral signature that is defined by the light-reflectance of a material substance. Colors that leave their trace in us condense atmospheres determined by the hues of light we perceive at a certain moment. My personal archive of color is a collection of places evoked by the light which I remember of specific times of day, seasonal variations, or even journeys along different latitudes.
The still life composition allows me to stage color as a character and have it perform the mood of an atmosphere. Color becomes expressive by solid blocks of hue. Moreover, when color is impure, flat fields of paint and clean lines paradoxically give depth to objects: color becomes meaningful when it plays with the shades of memory.
For me, color is the congealment of an ephemeral circumstance: an opportunity to observe in detail an instant passing by. It is also an instrument to explore unchartered emotion: queer sexualities, undefined desires, fluid dualities, dysmorphia, dislocation, dissemblance, dissassemblage. There is a certain nostalgia—a desire to go back to something that never was and never will be—that becomes utterly present in subjective perception.
In addition to his self-taught instruction in drawing that began at an early age, he trained as an apprentice to the painter Jimena Rincón Perezsandi (CDMX, 2016-2020) and to the graphic artist Pablo Torrealba (CDMX, 2019—). Among his influences are the work of Milton Avery, Henry Matisse, Alex Katz, David Hockney and Giorgio Morandi and the cinema of Luis Buñuel and Peter Greenaway.
Thanks to his training in dramatic art at the Guadalajara Musical Theater Academy (Jalisco, 2000-2006), he consolidated his themes and plastic exploration. His painting is characterized by the play of gazes that weave the compositional tension of his different pictorial subjects and the space that surrounds them. His use of color arrests the staging of intimate moments to reveal their transience. In his most recent project, he explores the genre of still life as an inventory of light, and the female and male nude as subjects of the queer gaze.
He has made two solo exhibitions "The Fashion Of Passion", BADA ART FAIR (CDMX, 2020) and "Pulsión de Vida", Mexican Association for the Fight Against Cancer (CDMX, 2017), and has participated in multiple collective exhibitions of international stature in Mexico, The United States, Spain, France, The United Kingdom, and The United Arab Emirates, prominently the following: “Obra Grafica” Quinto Muro - Pablo Torrealba Workshop, (CDMX, 2020), “Cuir”, Arting (CDMX, 2020); the auction "Assisted reproduction", Traeger & Pinto (CDMX, 2020); “Existimos”, Dab Art Galley, Residency Projects (CDMX and Los Angeles, 2020); “Va X México”, Traeger & Pinto, (CDMX, 2020); "No Name", National Museum of Art INBA (CDMX, 2020); "The Old Biscuit Factory", Ovalo Gallery and Art Number 23 Gallery (London, 2019); "Art3f Paris", Gaudi Gallery (Paris, 2019); "Art Exhibition", Gaudi Gallery (Madrid, 2019); "World Art Dubai", Galería Crisol (Dubai, 2019); "Art Shopping Spring Edition", Galería Crisol (Barcelona, 2018); "Do You Want a Revolution?", Independent Collective (CDMX; 2017); “Los Amigos de la Casa”, Casa Galería (CDMX, 2017); "Empty Collage", Casa Galería (CDMX, 2017); "Empty Collage", CENTRO (CDMX, 2017). He recently collaborates with 2bNonprofit as an emerging artist.