In writing a dictionary of contemporary visual language, Plan X gallery presents in its first Italian solo exhibition the work of french artist Julien Boudet.

GO!!!!!!! is an open-gas path, positive energy, an obsession. Through his images, Boudet deliberately chooses to intercept the symbols of certain contemporary subcultures, with the explicit goal of engaging and making even those who do not speak the language of art critics feel like masters of the language. His subjects are true to the point of establishing a direct dialogue with the interlocutor who is a child of hip-hop culture, and in the same way, those who are not accustomed to a certain subculture find themselves interacting with symbols, poses, and forms that they recognize from the display cases of museums, making GO!!!!!!! a cross-cultural journey into the raw contemporary reality.

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Boudet's works unfold in a transmedia journey between photography and sculpture. Each work is presented as the exact meeting point between popular and upper-class culture. For example, the sculpture SUPER CBR 46 is a clear homage to Valentino Rossi, The Doctor who taught for so many years, not between desks, but Moto GP tracks. In this set of body elements, the user can find the shapes of ancient masks featured in many museums, but also a bee shape and a level of reading inferred from another type of education. For example, a reference to Muhammad Ali's famous quote “fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee” – also cited amongst others in Eminem's Greatest – is a real mantra of hip-hop culture.

Likewise, the photographs: enter the gallery along with their full iconographic scope. Here, basketball and sports-related symbologies (the Swoosh in GT3 Shox Tailwind, basket-balls in Cheval Balenciaga) coexist without overpowering the elegant aesthetics of luxury brand advertisements. Just do it is also the idea behind sharing this kind of work in a gallery: to violate the ecclesiastical aura and bring into the temple a culture that does not get the representation it deserves. There are masses of people who share the same language, but whose voice has no echo and cannot be heard, especially in an art gallery or museum.

GO!!!!!!! is an omen to step out of a comfort zone and translate the multiplicity of voices that make up not only Boudet's works but the world’s.

 

Julien Boudet attended Parson School of Design (2013). He has exhibited his work at multiple Burberry flagship stores (2018) and la Chapelle du Quartier Haut (2018). His work has been included in group shows at MoMa (2017), Fashion Space Gallery (2020), Blum and Poe (2020), Stems Gallery (2020- 2022), WOAW Gallery (2021), and Volery Gallery (2021). Lately, a solo exhibition of his work at Ground Effect, Paris and Arsenal Contemporary, New York, (2022) and a forthcoming solo show at Stems Gallery, Paris, 2023.

Boudet is regularly published in avant-garde magazines, and commissioned by prominent fashion houses, he brings the high concept to commercial photography highlighting cultural and creative leaders for publications such as Vogue, GQ, Elle, and Highsnobiety among others.