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Juls Gabs is a painter who dissolves the classical definition of painting and re-applies its significance to address contemporary demands. She explores new figuration through the digital and invents alternative canvases combining traditional and technology-inspired methods.

 

Her work often takes art history and historical ideas as a starting point for digital works that heavily criticise current global sociopolitical practices. The computer is the incubator of ideas and experimentation that produces physical installations with a mix of traditional materials printed or manipulated by digital techniques. In her exploration towards overcoming the surface, the painting is not captured in a rectangle, it becomes a piece in the world. Hinting at classic figuration, Gabs' early influences include French Romanticism and British Pre-Raphaelite painting from Waterhouse and Delacroix, to Whistler and Sargent among others; she transformed this into Loose Figuration and Naïf style on contemporary mediums (digital paintings, electronic devices and installations). But she includes within them a current awareness of times of crisis and ecological disease; and how this has been absorbed and neutralised by working lifestyle and media propaganda. Her works include Hybrid paintings, QR codes, AR public paintings and Google Maps paintings up to electronic devices for performances and sculptures.

 

Gabs keeps exploring new surfaces, shapes and locations to paint the traditional concepts of Nature and Society. As these topics are running towards their decline, it feels essential to reinvent how we talk about and portray them in art. She heavily criticises how economic societies condition our natural assets today in a ‘destructive growth’, as it alienates us from natural instincts and divides us. In the context of criticising the status quo of the capitalist society that puts the capital as its focus, she considers putting one community over the other as anti-deontological that only benefits an artificial hierarchy. In contrast, she believes sustainable technology could help us reconnect with nature through genuine human collaboration.

 

Gabs was born in Spain. As a child, her curiosity expanded the limitations of the paper in her drawings…moving into bigger spaces her parents let her paint with water and a brush onto walls, floors, and objects that would dry when the midday sun hit. She was 4. After studying Fine Arts in Madrid, Gabs started her art career in London. As a young artist, she explored alternative public spaces for creation such as forests, lakes, and buildings and the digital realm. In her eight years in London, the themes of Accessibility and Inclusion became crucial. For her Digital is political, and the best way to promote these two concepts: it provokes accessibility to information and equality. This is why she often works with open-source software and found materials: It is the best way to democratise art and society. 

 

Now she paints her hopes for the future, connecting cultures and offering an arena of non-traditional experimentation that incorporates new perspectives and challenges the ordinary.  Her creations give you a sight of a near future, with the feeling of magical predictions or beliefs. A better tale that we can build. 

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ART STATEMENT

Juls Gabs (born 1989, San Sebastián) is a Spanish artist working in Painting and Digital. She claims her education started after college in 2015 thought collaborations, residencies and studio experimentation in London, UK. She currently lives in Boston, MA. Her work has been exhibited at Watou Art Festival 2023 (BE), Silvermine Art Centre (US), Vertical Crypto Art (Metaverse), Onstream Gallery (IT), Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop (UK) among others. In 2014, Gabs was awarded with the European Research of New Creative Spaces in new media, and the Revelation Artist Prize Mayte Spinola in 2019. In that same year, Gabs was recognised by Arteninformado through her inclusion on their list of ‘The 12 artist focus on the next generation’.

In 2023 she is showing a 13ft painting at Watou Art Festival 2023 commissioned by the government of Poperinge (BE). Her work Possibly Maybe is Shortlister for the National Prize Show 2023, at Cambridge Art Association, and she is the winner of the Finalist edition of Teravarna Award in Landscape. And her work "Ninfas' Secrets" was exhibited at QUEERwerks in Silvermine Art Centre (CT).

 

Previous solo exhibitions were "Blending Boundaires" (Rome), "error" (London, 2020), Unit 1 Gallery|Workshop, "Daring Forest" (Madrid, 2018), and "Goodies Boobies" (Madrid, 2018).

 

Selected for residencies "The Columbia Residency" with Roman Road Gallery (London, 2021) and "Sommer Atelier Aschersleben" (Germany 2021), Unit 1 Radical Residency® IV (London, 2019) and "Paradise AIR" for solo Art Residency (Tokyo, 2018). Exhibited works in art fairs like "(un)fair Milano" (IT 2023), SCOPE (Miami Beach, 2018) and JustMad8 (Madrid, 2017)

She had a commission by Aston Martin F1 in 2022 and her work constitutes part of Private Permanent Collections such as Lycee Moliere (Brussels, Belgium), Merode’s Castle (Gmünd, Austria), Palast Hohenems (Austria) Milton Keynes Arts Center (Milton Keynes, UK), Contemporary Museum Mayte Spinola (Marmolejo, Spain).

 

Her work has been published in media channels like Aston Martin F1FAD Magazine, London Arts EventsAssemblage MagazineImage.ie (2020) and Arteinformado, Ultima Hora Mallorca (2019).

 

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BIOGRAPHY

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