Rhythm Adjust

"In this piece, I explored the nostalgic memories of the close relationship I had with my brother when we were growing up. We played hours on end, hardly ever fought and even made up our own language (a mixture of Arabic, French and invented words). We shared such a joyous intimacy and understanding that it felt like we were twins despite a 5 year age gap. Throughout the years, I equated our closeness and happy childhood with the safe, warm and nurturing environment of the womb; a moment of harmony before being thrown in the world and taking our own separate ways.

To evoke the fluidity of memories and serene womb like atmosphere and inspired by the liquid landscapes of Helen Frankenthaler, I poured very diluted acrylic onto two gessoed shapes painted  on raw canvas and let the materiality of the paint take over. The result is the nebulous haze of fading and ever evolving memory and a feeling of slow and undulating movement akin to breathing." - Justine Formentelli, 2021

Justine Formentelli is a French artist based in London after many years spent abroad. Her recent work deals with mental spaces or Innerscapes and explores the various components that make up who we are. Using different textures, opacities and a vocabulary of recurring elements, she aims to give form to what seeps through us, from the mundane to the essential such as moods, thoughts, memories, behaviour patterns etc...While attempting to reveal an inner architecture and a sense of the intimate self, she also considers the forever shifting borders of the internal self and the external world.

Accolades

Education: MA Fine Art, Distinction, City and Guilds of London Art School, 2016-18. BA Fine Art, Atlanta College of Arts (now SCAD) USA, 1995-98.Illustration, Communication and Design

Selected exhibitions: Art from the heart 2021 Zuleika gallery. 2021. Life on Venus, The Tub in collaboration with the Auction Collective, 2020-21. Works on paper II. Blue Shop Cottage, London, 2020. Lost in isolation. Void Collective. 2020 What She Didn’t Say. Thames Side Studios Gallery. London 2020 Rarefaction. Ione and Mann. London. 2019. MA Degree Show. City and Guilds of London Art school. 2018

www.justine-formentelli.com
@jformentelli