Jamian Juliano-Villani
by Jesse Anderson
Jamian Juliano-Villani, an artist described as having an ‘abrasive disregard for decorum’, has just closed her solo show ‘It’ at the Gagosian, New York. The exhibition included a selection of her characteristically irreverent works such as Elvis and Me, 2024, Spaghettios, 2023, and Self-Portrait, 2023. The pieces, chaotic imagery airbrushed to plastic sheen, challenge the elitist environment of the white cube gallery. Juliano-Villani’s paintings look like visions from a fever dream: vivid colours and hyper-realistic figuration contribute to the surrealist feel of her work. Juliano-Villani’s paintings are saturated with images from pop-culture, imbuing them with a sense of familiarity which feels at once nostalgic and unnerving.
Juliano-Villani has, with little doubt, made it. Alongside establishing O’Flaherty’s, the art gallery she founded with Billy Grant in 2021, Juliano-Villani is also one of the artists representing the U.S.A at the Venice Bienalle. Her massive success is undeniable, but why? Why are we so drawn to the uncanny figurations she presents us with? Why are we so captivated by an artist whose work has been described as ‘irreverent’, ‘cartoonish’? Possibly because Juliano-Villani’s work is defined by subversion, a characteristic which provokes our curiosity. The tacky, airbrushed quality of Juliano-Villani’s canvases appropriates the traditional medium of painting to challenge our notions of what a painting should be, what it should look like. Far from the Formalist tendencies of Modernism, Juliano-Villani pushes the boundaries of Postmodernism until they collapse in upon themselves. Juliano-Villani returns art to oil on canvas, but her content, strangely figured objects painted in an uncomfortable realist hand, embodies postmodern uncertainty about the future of art. Her unapologetically weird paintings democratise art: their lack of meaning make them accessible to everyone. No prior knowledge of art history is required to appreciate the guttural strangeness of the paintings. Void of overt socio-political messages, the weirdness of Juliano-Villani’s paintings can be enjoyed (or, at least, viewed) in a cultural vacuum.
Elvis and Me, 2024, is an example of the tension Juliano-Villani establishes between irreverence and figuration. The double portrait figures a plastic looking Elvis Presley and the artist herself, who reaches behind her, placing her hand over Elvis Presley’s groin. The pair, dressed identically, stand against a blushed pink background reminiscent of a 1980’s photobooth. Juliano-Villani’s emotionally ambiguous expression stares blankly into the audience while Elvis appears to look into the distance. The piece, while showing formal skill in Juliano-Villani’s realistic hand, is unabashedly humorous. Juliano-Villani pokes fun at the act of oil painting: a traditional craft so revered, so sacred to art history, being used for a childish, playful depiction.
Jamian Juliano-Villani, Elvis and Me, 2024, oil on canvas, 249.6 x 161 cm
Some critics have compared her paintings to AI art, an interesting comparison, and one that Juliano-Villani encourages through her process, which at times may include inspiration from AI prompts. Juliano-Villani is known to use not only AI for inspiration, but also cult-icons such as Nathan Fielder, who she asked to write prompts for her. There have been instances of Juliano-Villani outsourcing canvases to reproduction painters in China, ‘providing modified found images and specifying dimensions for the facsimiles’.
Juliano-Villani explains that the reason she paints is because she loves art, and she loves ideas: ‘I’m a vehicle for ideas. I’m the tool.’ She does not feel it necessary for her hand to touch every part of the canvas which she calls her own, which challenges her own authorship and our perception of the artist. Juliano-Villani is unafraid of using borrowed images without permission, in-fact, she claims that the scandalous fun of using other people’s work is lessened when permission is granted by the owner. Juliano-Villani’s carefree attitude, her appropriation of the art world and its perhaps outdated customs, teeters on the brink between disrespectful and brilliantly fresh.
Beneath the painted surface of irreverence, critics have suggested undercurrents of trauma, critique on consumer culture, and satire in Juliano-Villani’s work. While paintings such as Gone with the Wind, 2018, or Three Penny Opera, 2018 may evoke discussion about environmental issues and consumerism, their socio-political critiques are overwhelmed, lost, by the sheer number of meaningless paintings from Juliano-Villani. Far from asking to be interpreted, these paintings tell the spectator what they are, inviting them not to interpret but to observe. Observation of Juliano-Villani’s work is rarely comfortable; the viewer may regularly come away with a feeling of complicity or voyeurism. In especially pessimistic cases, the spectator may walk away from a Juliano-Villani painting wishing they had said more, or at least said something more coherent.
Jamian Juliano-Villani, Self-portrait, 2023
With the global platform that she has, should we expect Juliano-Villani to use it ‘for good’? Should we expect social or political statements from artists with platforms such as Juliano-Villani’s? Should we have this expectation from all art? Or does Juliano-Villani make enough of a political statement in the visual meaninglessness of her paintings and her unapologetic artistic persona? Despite the absurdity of her paintings, Juliano-Villani does express intentionality in her work: when asked what she wished to evoke in her audience, Juliano-Villani responded, ‘Honesty, love for art, purpose and simplicity’. The accessibility of her art, unhindered by suggested interpretations or readings, confronts the matrix of contemporary art dominated by artists like Hirst. Luke White has read themes of capitalism, Christianity, and slavery in Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind, 2010, a work which displays a tiger shark which Hirst hired an Australian fisherman to catch before it was transported to London. This is exactly the kind of work which Juliano-Villani critiques: ‘Why don’t we talk about the high capitalism we all participate in while shitting on it and maybe be a little more self-aware? You could get a whole family out of debt for the price of a piece of art’.
Juliano-Villani’s art is thus a rebellion against the elitist, hypocritical nature of the artworld which champions artists like Hirst. Not drawn to financially excessive materiality, Juliano-Villani remains dedicated to oil or acrylic on canvas. While her paintings remain unequivocally freaky, undeterred by traditional expectations of art but relatively unpolitical, it is their existence, her existence, which enacts rebellion. Juliano-Villani vocalises her thoughts exactly on the state of the artworld, she is a prolific Instagram user, she advises fake-tanning two days before an event. She is also the owner of a successful gallery in New York city, the hegemonic centre of the artworld. Jamian Juliano-Villani challenges not only our expectations of painting, but of artists. Juliano-Villani reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously, telling us that ‘you can be funny and intelligent at the same time; it’s easy to forget that. I’m willing to be embarrassed to make it all happen.’
Bibliography
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Juliano-Villani, Jamian, ‘Why I Paint’, Phaidon, accessed April 20, 2024, https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2016/october/05/jamian-juliano-villani-why-i-paint/
Kramer, Lola, ‘Jamian Juliano-Villani’, ARTFORUM, accessed April 20, 2024, https://www.artforum.com/features/jamian-juliano-villani-1000-words-gagosian-show-2024-550919/
Martin-Gachot, Ella, ‘‘I Have No Idea How This Is Going to Go:’ Jamian Juliano-Villani Makes Her Gagosian Debut’, The Cult100, accessed April 20, 2024, https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2024/03/15/jamian-juliano-villani-gagosian-debut
Müller, Dominikus, ‘Jamian Juliano-Villani’, FRIEZE, accessed April 20, 2024, https://www.frieze.com/article/jamian-juliano-villani