Jules

Critical Note

back to blue in context by Aniko Berman

Back to Blue is Jules' most ambitious work to date. Created from raw material gathered on a marathon day on set (with a little help from 10 friends and artists, including Vinnie Hager and Daniel Koeth), the work continues the artist's particular exploration of illusion and reality, and the space where the two meet - visually, conceptually, technically.

While his digital works have always been rooted in analog assets initially captured IRL, then recast and reconstituted, this piece comprises multiple such elements, blocks of visual text seamlessly stitched together to hypnotically recount a cyclical tale of loss and love (from black to blue and back again, perhaps).

The resultant longer form narrative is one rarely presented within the limiting constraints of the gif form. Analog glitch, like true artifice: real footage of paid actors playing out a scene dictated by the artist. This "reality" is then abstracted out, aestheticized, glitched by hand, both heightened and obscured.

One recalls Yves Klein's performative paintings, the Anthropemtries: indexical images that function both as traces of a gesture (in this case - Klein's direction of painted nude models to imprint themselves on canvas or paper) - as well as abstracted illustrations of the human form, engaging in a long legacy of the nude from prehistory to the present.

Back to Blue similarly harmonizes dissonant registers of meaning, calling attention both to artifice and reality.

Is this the opposite of the Art's typical search for pure truth, or its very incarnation?

Sleight of hand, but here sincere not cynical. As truthful as the reflection of your phone screen, refracting blue light to and from the universe.