“When looking for light in the dark, do not forget to appreciate the color on the way. “
Presented for the first time in Paris, Julien Airault, self-taught French artist, born in 1979, leads us to plunge into an universe that has helped him to pass a difficult time in his life.
The word “salut” comes from the Latin “salutem”, which meant “something in good condition, in good health, whole”. It also means “life” as opposed to “death”. Therefore, “Salut” first corresponds to what keeps the good state, the integrity of something or someone, or, indirectly, an existence of which evokes salvation. This leads us to understand that a “planche de salut” is first and foremost a board that allows a shipwrecked person to survive at sea. Then, by extension, the “planche de salut” be- comes the way to escape disaster and stay alive.
We find the same “shipwrecked” image in Julien Airault’s paintings. The marriage between lights, mate- rials and colors which transports us into marine or aerial landscapes in which we paradoxically feel a peaceful torment. Each pictorial composition reflects a whirlwind of contradictory feelings revealing sometimes the calm and the beauty of a glow in the half-light, sometimes the aggressive force of the colors in tension.
Just like a man having found his salvation in front of a painting of a Master, bathed in the darkness and the light, Julien Airault reveals the path that served him as a guide, the one that slumbers in us, to survive and reach an absolute: inner peace.