Julie Villard & Simon Brossard

“While claiming to be obsessed with the operation of collection and accumulation, Julie Villard and Simon Brossard mobilize a process of composition which, from the different parts, makes us forget the provenance and the prior function. In space, the identification of the form thus operates vis-à-vis its overall apprehension: the latter, alternately, twists and rears, languishes and slouches, withers and withers. Condensing the realms of the living, human and non-human, and the registers of the "mechanical", daily or cutting-edge, each organism-totem is enveloped in an eternal flesh, whether it gleams with the ultra-smooth finish of a machined part or darkens with the roughness of an ore.

The metabolization operation from which the sculptures proceed, conceived over the exhibitions like so many families, is a reflection of the work process of the artists: about “MENU”, their first solo exhibition at the Exo Exo gallery in Paris in 2018, they say they spent three months locked in a tiny bathroom, hands and feet in water, welding steel with wool. Even today, and even though the first 3D printed parts are appearing in their compositions, the manual production, and the investment of their bodies in the molding, modeling and sanding operations, remains crucial to the within a symbiotic distribution of roles.”

“Can we laugh at the end of the world? With a frivolous and flirtatious elegance, the sculptures of Julie Villard & Simon Brossard agree with our anxieties. They take the form of humanized functional furniture and degenerate figures. (…)

The alcohol. It is often through him that many stories begin. It is therefore without surprise thanks to him that the one of Julie and Simon begins. Not during a tryst or a party, but precisely through a bar (the furniture). While students at the Cergy art school, the two friends felt like organizing an exhibition to celebrate the end of the year: "To bring together works and people, we made a bar filled with wine . It was the trigger. Working together then became obvious, ”explains the duo. Since 2016, Julie and Simon have been sharing their hands and their brains."

“By reworking within their sculptures the material vestiges of late capitalism and a post-nuclear plant, Julie Villard & Simon Brossard lay bare the imaginations of our time. Enclosing a soft belly, angular filaments twist on themselves. A spongy flower-head tops them. Of a brownish green, the vegetable arabesque shines with a metallic luster: car body color or beetle belly. This post-nuclear plant (Love the Human Smell, 2018), we already saw it during MENU, the solo exhibition of Julie Villard & Simon Brossard at the Exo Exo gallery in Paris. The two young artists, who have been working together since their meeting at the Beaux-Arts de Cergy in 2016, then bristled the space with a string of these braced and contorted structures."