BIOGRAPHY

Julien Allègre, born in 1980 in Arles, is a self-taught sculptor and musician renowned for his unique approach to metal sculpture. Initially destined for a career in mechanics, he turned to art after being influenced by music and decisive encounters with other artists.

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Artistic Career

Julien Allègre began his artistic career working with metal, which he considers a living and reactive material. He is known for his sculptures that explore the relationship between the heaviness of metal and his own artistic sensibility. His works are characterised by the use of recycled materials, such as oil drums and barrels, which he transforms into poetic and strange characters. Over the years, Allègre has expanded his palette of materials to include antique bronze, allowing him to navigate between the archaic and the contemporary in his creations. His work is marked by a quest for harmony between raw materiality and refined aesthetics.

Artistic Philosophy

Allègre stands out for his ability to reinvent mythical figures and challenge established cultural certainties. His art is often described as a wild form of disfigurement, in which he explores the scars of humanity through jagged shapes and fragmented materials. His artistic approach is strongly influenced by his travels, particularly to Senegal, where he discovered the art of recycling.

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In summary, Julien Allègre is an artist whose work transcends the traditional boundaries of sculpture to offer a profound reflection on the material and immaterial, the past and the present.

"Being able to express my admiration for nature seemed obvious to me. These slender beings are guardians of a bygone era and sentinels of the present... They are devoid of colour and heads, in their simple stature as observers,

their bodies resembling fantastical skeletons of branches where time has left only the essential material to bear witness!

 

These fossilised men are one of the outcomes of the journey of matter that I have been developing for more than ten years. I find metal most often in its commercial state, already used but in the form of objects. I have learned to work with it and give it, it seems to me, a living aspect.

 

The material has become rough, the range of rust tones is poetry to me, the layers of lines are reminiscent of spring sap rising, the ends of the pieces, of a burst of branches calling for their foliage.

Once placed in a ‘natural’ environment, they seem to dialogue with their surroundings, firmly rejecting any wrongdoing that might be done to nature, of which they are the guardians.

Julien Allègre