Jamian Juliano-Villani's It is now on view at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea

JAMIAN JULIANO-VILLANI / It

March 16–April 20, 2024 @gagosian

Juliano-Villani’s irreverent artistry is fueled by her obsession with consumer culture and social taboo, resulting in a mirage of distorted iconography. Augmenting this strategy with an awareness of representational painting’s history, she produces images derived from a personal archive of books, magazines, and photographs, as well as from online sources. Using acrylic, airbrush, and oil painting techniques, she incorporates fragments of her own writing and elements of the work of other artists such as Danish painter and sculptor Ovartaci (1894–1985). Juliano-Villani’s work also refers to cartoons, addressing racial, sexual, and social stereotypes through their mischievous wit and unsettling ambiguity. For her, these kinds of images are “democratic, based on impulse and speed; much like a sniper with a vision.”

The paintings in It see Juliano-Villani pursuing strategies of appropriation and reference that resonate with the work of artists such as Richard Prince, Sturtevant, and particularly Mike Kelley, with whom she shares a fondness for abject and profane imagery. She also cites Robert Gober’s interest in confronting the viewer with suppressed or partially hidden memories. Juliano-Villani adds new conceptual strata to these various influences and prioritizes the communication of ideas over the honing of any specific aesthetic, resulting in an “arranged marriage” of non sequitur form and content. Any hint of grandeur is contrasted with a “dose of reality” provided by everyday commercial iconography.

Throughout It, a palpable vulnerability lurks behind the outward confidence of Juliano-Villani’s compositions, holding up a mirror to the contradictions of her own artistic and familial histories. Having consciously avoided joining her father’s promotional silkscreen printing business, she now finds herself “promoting” such inspirational figures as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ashley Bickerton through acts of creative homage. As artist and O’Flaherty’s cofounder Billy Grant remarks, these works are “part self-portrait with a side of commercial nostalgia, all in service of the whole.”It is accompanied by the first major publication on Juliano-Villani’s work, which surveys paintings made from 2013 to 2024, including works from the exhibition. Designed by Philipp Hubert, the fully illustrated catalogue features an introduction by Hans Ulrich Obrist and an essay by Domenick Ammirati.