Juliette Agabra - A FRENCH PAINTER AND COLLAGIST
Juliette Agabra is a French artist, painter, and collagist. Since 2015, she has had numerous exhibitions in France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, and China - but never in Switzerland.
Agabra's atypical career is undoubtedly rooted in her family history, in which she met the fantasy worlds of two artists: her grandmother, a painter, and her father, a filmmaker and writer.
Her professional path, however, initially led her via an engineering school and a doctorate in artificial intelligence. But then Juliette Agabra took the path to become a visual artist, with a focus on artistic collage (training with Pierre-Jean Varet, the founder of the museum "Artcolle", the first museum for collage art).
Since then, Agabra has developed her very own technique of collage and montage and has been successfully represented at numerous fairs and exhibitions with her impressive works.
The technique:
Juliette Agabra practices artistic collage in combination with other techniques. As material she uses all kinds of printed paper, magazines, flyers, newspapers and more.
Her approach is unique and involves very different phases. Before each image idea, she deconstructs the printed images into unidentifiable fragments. These result in a palette of a special kind.
Juliette Agabra describes her work thus: "These pre-cut fragments not only offer me colours like a paint tube. The paint from one tube can be mixed with another. You can use it as a glaze, work on it with a knife and so on. But this little paper fragment offers more than just its colour. The colour is textured, graduated, there are reflections and reliefs printed on it, and my cut-out has given it a shape. It provides a basis for the imagination, it suggests, recalls, and evokes something quite different from the image from which it is taken. It triggers a creative reverie that triggers new images in me. In this way I begin to build the image. Then I must go in search of the missing fragment of this incomplete puzzle".
Agabra builds complex fantasy worlds with intricate lines of tension and contrasting lighting on a wooden background with small brushstrokes. She plays with colours and textures to create effects such as depth, instability, and movement.
The collage is only executed when the artist deems the composition complete. Agabra uses special techniques to preserve the original colours and protect the delicate paper. The individual fragments of the painting are positioned extremely carefully and joined together with a pH-neutral special adhesive so that nothing warps over time. Finally, a matt UV-resistant varnish is applied.
Juliette Agabra's paintings are completely flat, without reliefs or reflections. The paper is as if fused with the support material. Thus, nothing should hinder the viewer's journey into these fantasy worlds.
Voices:
« Le travail de coloriste de Juliette Agabra nous embarque dans une proposition au-delà du réel, entre organique et minéral, où l'infiniment grand flirte avec l'infiniment petit. Dans un second temps seulement, on s'interroge sur la technique qui sort autant des sentiers battus que cette signature esthétique si singulière de l'artiste. »
Valmigot, Commissaire de l'exposition Base'Art, France
« Juliette AGABRA mêle la matière pour offrir une œuvre protéiforme, réinventant le sens premier de ce qu'elle réutilise, dans une démarche poétique et transfiguratrice. »
Philippos VAZAKAS, L'officiel des Galeries et Musées, avril 2016

Juliette Agabra: Inlandsis / Collage sur bois, 30 x 60 cm, 2018

Juliette Agabra: Conquête / Collage sur bois, 60 x 70 cm, 2020

Juliette Agabra: Rebecca / Collage sur bois, 30 x 30 cm, 2016

Juliette Agabra: Sirocco / Collage sur bois, 30 x 30 cm, 2020
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