Entrée interdite Painting

Julien Primard (born in 1986) is a French self-taught painter, and also a designer. He lives and works in Toulon in the south of France. Julien Primard began painting in the early 2000s, in the streets on the walls of abandoned factories in the Paris suburbs, and then founded the collective La Thérapicturale with a group of graffiti artist friends. After various artistic interventions, Primard curated the exhibition ‘Lieux d’être’ in 2015, at the Petit Lieu de l’Art Contemporain in Toulon. This project led him to affirm his style, which he revealed at Backside Gallery, Marseille, in two solo exhibitions: Invisible in 2016 and Vestiges in 2019. Inspired by classical and surrealist currents, Primard paints oil compositions which take us to unusual places, sometimes populated by anonymous and invisible characters. His paintings are meticulously prepared through daily photography and drawing. The photos of scooters, buildings, worn shoes and other condemned doors that he accumulates become fragments that he assembles to constitute his visual narratives.