Background

Ethnicity: Her father is Viet and her mother is of French ancestry.

Julie Curtiss was born in 1982, in Paris, France.

Education

In 2004, Julie received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden. Later, in 2006, she attained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago. The same year, in 2006, Curtiss got a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the École Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Career

After Julie's graduation from the École Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux-Arts of Paris in 2006, she lived in Tokyo. Influenced by the local art scene and Japanese graphic imagery, she started a body of works, focusing on drawing. In 2010, after a brief come back to France, Curtiss finally settled down in Brooklyn, where she currently lives and works.

During her career, Julie took part in numerous group exhibitions, held at different galleries, including those at the Galerie du Pont Neuf, Paris, 2004; the Galerie Suty, Coye-la-Forêt, 2009; the Galerie Lemniscate, Toulouse, 2010; Camel Art Space, Brooklyn, 2011; Boston Center for the Arts, 2013; Firework Gallery, Brooklyn, 2014; Hionas Gallery, New York City, 2016, and many others.

Also, she held several solo exhibitions and took part in two-person shows, including those at 106 Green Gallery in Brooklyn, New York City, 2017; Various Small Fires gallery, Los Angeles, 2018, and others.

Achievements

• Julie Curtiss is a well-known artist, who gained prominence for her works, that explore the representation of women in art history.
  
  Curtiss is the recipient of invitations to various artist residencies, including the Painting Residency Jose Cordero Garcia in 2010, Residency Program from Contemporary Artists Center at Woodside in 2013, Art residency at Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Ithaca, in 2017, and others.
  
  Also, she attained several awards, including the Erasmus Grant for European exchange program in 2003 and Louis Vuitton Moet Henessy's Young Artists Award in 2004.
  
  Curtiss' work is included in the permanent collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China.

Works

More photos

• installation

  • Bun

• painting

  • Dog Days

  • Chinatown

  • Woman in High Heels

  • Onlookers

  • Hair Part

  • Blind Hands

  • In Link

  • Voyeuse

  • Leaky Toes

  • Carapace

  • D'apres l'Olympia

  • Another Piece of Pie

  • Quarantine

  • Feast

  • Duet

  • Venus

  • Friend

  • Beach Trip

  • Here Master's Voice

  • Honey moon

Views

Curtiss often draws inspiration from scenes she witnesses in New York City, wonders of the natural world and notions of femininity. She enjoys associating humor with darkness, the uncanny and the mundane, grotesque shapes to vivid colors. Also, Julie is interested in the various aspects, that female identity can take, especially through the opposite notions of Nature and Culture.

With her faceless portraits of women, gnarled fingers and toes, and voluptuous bodies, composed of hair, she presents the viewer with an enigmatic puzzle, an invitation to reflect on the idea of an unfixed, ever-changing self.

Quotations: "If the Chicago imagists and the surrealists had a baby, I think it would look a little like my work."

"I thought what I really wanted to do was illustration, but after a year of preparatory school I quickly understood that painting was for the best way for me to freely express my thoughts."

"I think my work has become more defined over the years; it use to be sprawled aesthetically, but I have refined my artistic vocabulary in the past few years to make it more specific and unique."

"I am fascinated by female archetypes and their representations throughout art history."

Interests

• Artists

  Robert Gober, Peter Saul, Nicole Eisenman, Tal-R, John Wesley, Christina Ramberg, Chris Ware, Manet, Courbet, Degas, Magritte, Duchamps, Matthew Barney and others.

Connections

Julie is married to Clinton King.

husband:

Clinton King