From Dust
to Life

Are our memories ever-lasting? Frozen in time and space, with loved ones and perfect

strangers, memories seem to possess a permanence in our minds, yet are also fleeting due to

our imperfect recollection, metamorphosing the images of our thoughts.

Julien Spianti, born in 1982 and originally from France, depicts this phenomenon and offers a

reconsideration of the painting of memories. Inspired by a tapestry of cultures, from Italy to

Russia passing through Romania, his thirst for exploration, understanding of humanity and

fascination for man’s psyche have consumed his practice and study of the human mind. Instead

of a classical academic artistic training, Spianti decided to dissect philosophical questions,

undoubtedly conditioning his choice of subjects and their contemplative character. Whether this

interrogation takes the form of drawings or installations, the human condition and the tragic

cycle of life we experience perpetually lives within Spianti’s works.

From Dust to Life interrogates our perception of memories and the balance of emotions they

trigger. Indeed, Spianti’s works rely on the oscillation of contrasts. Painting memories in an

illusive manner, his works balance between the dynamism of his static brushstrokes and the

muffled colours of human traits, the solar and radiant appearance of the memories against the

heavy and ominous awareness of the futility of life. Nonetheless, these works emerge like

surges of energy, emphasizing the playfulness and breeziness of life with scenes of children

running and rustling through nature. Based on photographs, Spianti has reappropriated and

reimagined these existing memories to create new ones, belonging to no one and, therefore,

everyone. Wearing no particular signs of a specific culture, class or time, his figures find their

power and meaning in their universality and anonymity, allowing a full immersion and relatability

with the artist’s created memories.

Spianti seems to also reconsider nudity and how our nakedness deepens and transforms our

contact with the world. As theorized by John Berger, nudity and nakedness, seemingly

synonymous in their description of the physical, in fact presents a vast distinctness stemming

from the presence or lack thereof of an audience gaze. Where nakedness is the rudimentary

description of wearing nothing, nudity only exists in the audience’s gaze. This exclusive

relationship between the posed and the viewer embodies the human condition. Spianti, on the

other hand, reconsiders nudity as a worldly connection, surpassing the one-to-one relationship

of a nude. His figures, mythological and unearthly, interact and play with the exterior world

through their bodies, intensifying the idea that it is our body that experiences life first, whilst

affirming their nudity to others in an instinctive, animalistic manner.