Modern Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Julien Ceccaldi at its Helmet Row gallery. This is Ceccaldi’s first solo exhibition with Modern Art.
Working in painting, sculpture, and comic books, Julien Ceccaldi explores a set of archetypal characters that morph and develop in different iterations of themselves. Influenced by the Shōjo manga genre — which focuses on romantic relationships and heightened emotions, Ceccaldi portrays characters as yearning or aspiring in some form or another: for love, sex or success. Attention or affirmation is sought through different means, and Ceccaldi’s world tends to be split into two polarised types of being: hulking, muscular, glowing bodies – aloof targets of sexual and romantic desire – and the unnoticed, exhausted other in this unrequited dyad. Through compositions framing the gaunt, almost repulsive, figure as a lead protagonist, the artist hints at the grace and nobility lying underneath their off-putting traits.
