Julien Meert
°1983, Brussels, Belgium
Works and lives in Brussels.
Julien Meert works at the crossroads of sincerity, intimacy and estrangement. Moving between painting, drawing, collage, animation, and music (under the pseudonym Roger 3000), his practice is a sustained investigation into the construction of identity and the limits of (self)-representation. Drawing on the visual and cultural codes of the 1980s and 1990s, for example, graffiti, cartoons, and arcade games, Meert transforms the imagery of popular culture into psychological landscapes and images for reflection.
Throughout his work, Meert uses his own likeness as both a subject and a pretext, either distorting or enlarging his face or staging himself in uncanny situations. His long-standing series of close-cropped self-portraits, rendered in shifting techniques from airbrush to pencil and oil, explores depersonalisation and derealisation through repetition: the self dissolves into a motif, at once familiar and remote. For over a decade, Meert has unfolded this series on large vertical formats with identical dimensions. Despite their deceptively naive appearance, bright palettes and playful motifs, Meert’s compositions reveal a deep sense of melancholy and introspection, his recurring figure serving as a vessel for both humour and despair.
In parallel to his works on canvas, Meert’s drawings, animations and collages rely upon registers of absurdity. Notably, his Screensavers series, which takes its title from the animated computer backgrounds of the 1990s. These looped videos present Meert repeating micro-actions, the endless push-ups alluding to the ever-increasing performances expected of artists. The publication Météorismes (Triangle Books, 2023), saw Meert develop a melancholic vision with humour and release through the depiction of semi-abtracted elements recalling body parts (an ass, an intestine, a bloated belly, a testicle, a clitoris). It is across this wide range of techniques and media that Julien Meert reveals human existence, and the life of an artist, for what it truly is: a relentless tragicomedy, simultaneously familiar, funny, and terrifying.
