Because he works with so many different materials, it is hard to classify Julien Nédélec as an artist: A polyfabricant? With language play being a more or less constant theme: A polywright? His website labels him a plasticien, the perfect French word that captures more of the media in which he works than its usual translation “visual artist” does. In Zéro2, Antoine Marchand writes:

Everything, with him, is subject to manipulation, appropriation, and diversion, at times in the most trivial and basic way imaginable. His work is based on permanent mischief, a desire to destabilize the viewer, and be forever creating a slight discrepancy, which barely ruffles the reading of the work—well removed from the showiness of many present-day productions. He bypasses the daily round and takes us towards somewhere else that is not that far away, but all the more joyful. … What should incidentally be underscored in this young artist’s praxis is his ability to move from one medium to another, without the slightest bother or apprehension. It is impossible to pigeonhole Julien Nédélec’s praxis in any one particular medium.

Several of his works have been hosted on the Greek island of Anafi by the Association Phenomenon and the Collection Kerenidis Pepe, whose website also notes that his

practice can take many forms, from sculpture to drawing, through books and photography, with a predilection for the paper, that he uses not only as a support, but also as a material that he bends, cuts, colors, stacks or crumples. His works are the result of linguistic and formal games that reveal the artist’s fascination with the potentialities of language, with a malice that places him as an heir apparent of the Oulipo, while his taste for geometric and serial shapes brings him closer to the tradition of minimalism.

With paper as a favorite medium, there are a handful of artist’s book among the many other forms. Taken together, his artist’s books almost make up an anthology of homage to book artists from the 1960s to the present. He also belongs to the school of appropriators embracing forerunners like Bruce Nauman, Richard Prince, and Richard Pettibone and contemporaries like Michalis Pichler, Antoine Lefebvre, and Jérémie Bennequin, all of whom have embraced the self-reflexive artist’s book as an appropriate medium for appropriation. No wonder Galaad Prigent’s Zédélé Éditions, the French publisher that hosts Anne Moeglin-Delcroix and Clive Phillpot’s Reprint Series of artists’ books, is so fond of his bookworks.

TER (2021)

TER (2021)
Julien Nédélec
Softcover, saddle stitch with staples. H240 W165 mm. [36] pages. Acquired from Zédélé Éditions, 21 September 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with the artist’s permission.

“Tout”

The sentences to be deciphered from these full-page-bleed letters are Tout a été redit. Tout a été refait, which, in English, would be “Everything has been said. Everything has been done.” But it also has the echoes of a French children’s song, “Tout ce que je fais“: