Cheyenne Julien
BBQ, 2017
About:
Cheyenne Julien (b. 1994) lives and works in The Bronx, and received her BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2016. Residencies include the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, New York, NY; the OxBow School of Art, Saugatuck, MI; the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, Johnson, VT; BronxArtSpace, Bronx, NY; and an upcoming residency at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA. Julien has had a recent solo exhibition at Smart Objects, Los Angeles. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Karma, New York; Loyal Gallery, Stockholm; and White Cube Bermondsey, London.
Morning Cigaret, 2018.
Night Session, 2018
Money Bag, 2018
Julien’s work explores alternative realities, both a coping mechanism and response to the structures of environmental racism that, from an early age, imbued the artists with a strict sense of either belonging or not belonging. Teetering on the edge of Surrealism, her arresting, boldly colored oil paintings depict satirical figures with faces contorted in hyperbolic, emotionally wrought expressions. Her simultaneously tragic and humorous characters appear frozen, caught either mid-action or in a moment of response. Within tightly cropped compositions that provide few contextual clues, the viewer must intuit a narrative within Julien’s dream-like world.(text Chapter NY Gallery)