Biography

Born in 1976, Whitney Bedford lives and works in Los Angeles.

“The artist’s latest series brings together what she calls Vedute, a series of landscape paintings inspired by late nineteenth and early twentieth century masters – from Degas to Sérusier, Klimt or Van Gogh. As with her paintings of shipwrecks, icebergs, and rainforests, the California-based artist reappropriates this historical legacy and uses it as references for her autobiographical landscapes, which work as contemporary allegories of social and environmental experiences.” *

Her last works are also the result of a new working process. In the earlier paintings, drawing was used to create an architecture of gesture. From now on, although the drawing is still at the origin of her paintings from a technical point of view, she invents a meticulous process of masking and unmasking that puts the drawn flowers in the foreground. The pastoral scenes, pushed behind or outside the drawing space, seem more distant. The distance thus created between the painting and the drawing underlines the artist’s search for archives and the rigorous selection of images that seem to belong to a lost or even disappearing world.

On top of her painting practice, she pursues since 2020 an encyclopedic work that consists in drawing a female figure every day, chosen for her determination to make the world a better place. This tirelessly repeated gesture is a sign of solidarity and relentless support for the women who raise their voices. She considers these portraits, systematically posted on Instagram, as votive images, part of the proceeds of which will be donated to the Emily’s List action committee, which helps to elect progressive, anti-racist Democratic candidates.

* Extract of the press release of her latest show at Art : Concept, 2022.

Her work is present in several international collections such as: Eric Decelle, Brussels, Belgium; Francois Pinault Collection, Paris, FR; Ginette Moulin and Guillaume Houzé Contemporary Art Collection, Paris, FR; Hammer Museum, Hammer Contemporary Collection, Los Angeles, US; Jumex Collection, Mexico City, MX; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, Miami, US; and The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK. Awards: UCLA Hammer Museum Drawing Biennal, Los Angeles (2001); Peggy Guggenheim Studentship, Venice (1997).

Selected solo exhibitions include: Miles McEnery Gallery, New York (2021); Vielmetter, Los Angeles (2020, 2021 and 2023); Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago (2018); Saatchi Gallery, London (2018); Starkwhite, Auckland (2016); Taymour Grahne, New York (2015); Vielmetter, Los Angeles (2011), Houdini: Art and Magic, Jewish Museum, New York (2010).

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Biography

Born in 1977 in Brive-La-Gaillarde, Julien Audebert lives and works in Paris. Whether it be cinema or photography, History is a central subject in his work. It is dialecticized, reconstructed or exhumed, through processes from which emerges the ideology underlying the dominant cultural forms (cinema, media, literature, pictorial genres…). His works often materialize a point of tension or climax of a political or military nature where geographical variables play a particular role.

Since 2019, Julien Audebert has been painting, producing various series of small-format works in oil on copper. His most recent series, La nuit du monde (“The Night of the World”), brings together portraits with a disturbing look: the eyes are obtained by two pistol shots that the artist makes before painting the face. Quoting the philosopher F. Hegel, the artist turns “night” into a place of original passage, a pretext for exploring the limits of representation and the materiality of its support. His precedent series, Obsidionales, consists of small oil paintings on copper following his large-scale battlefield Nocturnes (and his recent film Mars and Venus…). These exogenous “flowers of war” moved by the soles of soldiers, railroad or horses, are painted, centred in the middle of the frame, as a child would do, done alla prima (a technique imposed by the adhesion on the copper). These works, such as his recent aquarium paintings (Eden), create conflagration between the subject and an often invisible historical underpinning.

His work is present, among others, in the following collections: FRAC Aquitaine; Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; FRAC Auvergne; FRAC Haute-Normandie; FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon; FRAC Pays de La Loire; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Solo exhibitions include: Art : Concept, Paris/FR (2023, 2020, 2016, 2011, 2008); commande publique de la commune de Varengeville, dans le cadre du cinquantenaire de la mort de Georges Braque, Varengeville/FR (2012); In Extenso, Clermont-Ferrand/FR (2009); Santa Barbara Contemporary Art forum, Santa Barbara/US (2008).

Selected group exhibitions/festivals: Musée Bertrand de la Ville de Châteauroux/FR (2024); Hiflow, Plan-les- Ouates/CH (2022); Château du Rivau, Lémeré/FR (2022); École des beaux-arts de Nîmes/FR (2019); Pool Internationales, TanzFilmFestival Berlin, Dock 11, Berlin/DE (2019); The LA Dance, Film Festival, Los Angeles/US (2018); Portland Danse Film Fest 2017, Portland/US (2017)…

His first monograph was published by Mousse Publishing in 2022, with texts by Philippe-Alain Michaud and Corinne Rondeau.

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