Juliet Vles (Switzerland

CREATOR

© PHOTOS BY: HERBERT TUSCHY / co. VAS

Juliet Vles is a European multidisciplinary artist. Her oeuvre spans a period of more than three decades and includes painting, wall sculpture, drawing, print making, and installation. In her recent work, the artist increasingly abandons the notion of making images and rather sees her art as an extension of living architecture.

J.V.: I was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1950. Ten years later, my family moved on to Switzerland, where I grew up. Although I always knew I was going to be an artist, I had serious misgivings about the western art world that I thought was (and still think is) superficial and elitist. To stay independent, I held a lot of different money-jobs: as a saleswoman in bookshops, library assistant, dog educator, portrait photographer, social assistant, psychiatric nurse, and finally as proprietor of a framing business called the “Rahmenhandlung” – which is a German play of words and means, respectively, a shop making frames, and a frame narrative in literature. Although I really liked all those jobs, it soon became obvious that this did not leave me with enough time for my artistic work. Therefore, when I was offered the possibility to buy an abandoned farmhouse in the South of France for a song, I packed up and left. Since then, I have been living and working in the wilds of France for thirty years. This meant living in very straitened circumstances and without access to cultural centers. However, I consider myself privileged, as I am one of the rare really independent artists able to live off my art, without ever having to make concessions regarding my esthetic choices, nor concerning my political engagements, which I would qualify as anti-fascist in the wider sense of the word. This logically includes feminism, atheism, and the defense of animal rights. With the coming of internet and online galleries, my life has become much easier, mostly thanks to the US-based online gallery Saatchi Art, whose curators have always very generously supported my work. I have participated in many exhibitions, and today my works are sold all over the world. I also curated several exhibitions with the participation of artist friends as well as a manifestation against religious intolerance with Amnesty International. With the rising of fascism in France, I recently decided to return to Switzerland. At present, I live and work in a spacious studio not far from the German border. It is of course impossible to blend out the recent pandemic and the terribly absurd war in the Ukraine, but as far as my personal life goes, I still feel that I have a particularly efficient guardian angel, and am duly grateful.

ZITA V.: What in life encourages or continues to encourage you to live in creation?

J.V.: Truth to tell, I have never looked for encouragement as I never needed it. I seem to be the kind of person whose life is more or less predetermined. At ten years old, it was clear that I was going to be an artist – not a mainstream artist either (never was mainstream in my life, even as a child), nor the bohemian version (don’t mind sex, but drugs and alcohool make me terribly sick, so that option was out too), but rather the quiet solitary kind, like James Ensor or the Brontë sisters, who spends her life building an entirely personal oeuvre far from the madding crowd. Although formally my work may be very eclectic, after almost forty years of artistic creation, I would say that the whole of my oeuvre can be classified as Individual Mythologie. This may rightly be seen as an ivory tower attitude, but I still consider the ivory tower as the powerhouse of general resistance, clean thinking, and original creation (provided the windows are open and it has an internet connection!).

(SWITZERLAND) INTERVIEW WITH JULIET VLES

Solaris 2” , glass on wood, 80 x 100 x 5 cm, 2017 Switzerland), from the glassworks, Title: “ © Juliet Vles (

ISSUE 04

ZITA V.: How would you describe your creative process? (3*)

J.V.: It is rather difficult to chronologically analyze my creative process as I never stop having ideas (all of them perfectly realizable) and never know where to start. Then one or two ideas take the lead by bloody assertiveness (I suppose this works like the run of the sperm to the egg) and never stop mobbing me until I start working on their realization, either in real time or on a computer. They continue to hassle me while I’m working and until I have finished. I’m never satisfied with the result, but if the work itself shuts up, I consider it is okay. They know what they want and they are usually right. Then the same story starts all over again....

ZITA V.: Tell us a little about your creative technologies, which are infinitely diverse and original.

J.V.: Techniques do not interest me overmuch; it is the artistic vision that counts. Everyone can learn to draw as everyone can learn to write – but that does not mean that every person who can write is a great poet. In my case, it is mostly learning by doing. To make a wall sculpture, I had to become a carpenter, which I like a lot. Often considered as a sub-species of sculpture, wall sculpture is in truth an art form in its own right, and defined, not by its affinity to other forms of artistic expression, but by its interaction with the wall and the surrounding architecture. The glassworks are more delicate, and the balance between wood and glass (or plexiglass) is not always obvious. Nevertheless, I like using materials that do not easily fit, which gives additional tension to the work. Collage work is very satisfying, as the possibilities are infinite and chance plays an important part. However, my favorite technologies are computer and Photoshop, because they allow very fast multitasking. Over the last ten years, most of my wall sculptures have been built-by-computer, before being converted into wood, glass, and paper. Now I am eagerly waiting for a 3D printer that can be connected directly to the brain!

ZITA V.: Being-self is that “being that can only be said to be a precondition of any discovery, beingdiscovery, not a detectable being.” Being has no uncertainty, no differences, no movement; it is firm, steady, calm. How important that being-self is to your creation?

J.V.: It is certainly true that my work has a strong spiritual connotation. I have often been told by collectors and curators that my abstractions make people, who enter the room, pause for a moment and just stand there and look, before taking a deep breath and going on with life. This short moment of absolute concentration might perhaps be qualified as the essence of being, and indeed the raison d’être 3

L136+L93 (INSTALLATION VIEW)

ISSUE 04

© Juliet Vles (Switzerland), Title: “L137 (RAD)”, mixed media collage on wood, 147 x 147 x 25 cm, 2022

of my abstractions is this key moment. However, I do not think that my line of action can be explained by philosophical, religious, psychological, or any other intellectual analysis, although these can profitably be used for the development of conceptual, political, or satirical art. In the beginning, abstraction in art simply meant the reduction of the physical world to its essential forms and colors. But somewhere on the way, the link to the material matrix got lost, or rather proved superfluous. Today, most abstract painters do exactly the same thing as their figurative colleagues: they paint what they see. Why they see what they see, and how the brain translates its intern and extern output into art, is a question that in time will be answered by neurology. Obviously, the answers will be very complex and depend not only on the artist’s personality, but also on his or her historical and geographical background, and perhaps on a more general «Weltgeist» that connects us all.

J.V.: This is indeed an important question in my abstract work, as my problems with materialistic necessities are notorious and a real obstacle to my artistic vision. This is another reason why I like to use digital technologies, which sometimes allows me to circumvent time and gravity, my most virulent enemies. However, and in spite of my war with physical reality, I will never move

ZITA V.: Something contrary to being-self is “nonexistence.” Absence is not the absence of being, but the denial of being to oneself, the affirmation of the content beyond the household. Looking at your abstractions, we can feel that you are unlocking the being that brings into your creation “no one,” a selfconscious “zero space,” in which knowledge begins. What motivates you to travel in those deep spaces in your work?

J.V.: In point of fact, the “deep spaces” are my normal living-room and “space zero” my usual working condition as described under (3*). I often feel that my artworks make themselves and I am just the studio-slave who has to do the dirty work. This is all right with me. If I always knew in advance, what the artwork was going to be, I’d probably be bored to death. I do the preparatory work and start with the realization of my ideas. Eventually, the work takes over and goes either in my sense or straight against it. In both cases, the work is king. Blending out your own conscious personality might be the only possible way to make abstract art that transcends the personal limits of the artist and his or her environment.

ZITA V.: Moving away from the materiality of the world in your work is like rejoicing. It is as if your works do not know the determinations, the socalled “necessities” – natural or social. Senses and consciousness are the only solid ground on which to rely. How important is the boundary between the “necessity” and the existence of this world in your work?

ISSUE 04

© Juliet Vles (Switzerland), from the glassworks, solaris 8 , mixed media, collage, glass, 150 x 162 x 8cm, 2018

entirely away from a material or even dominating plasticity and multilayered texture, that are, paradoxically, an essential premise to the spirituality of my work. This should be understood in the same way as our feelings about stones or trees. Although they have a strong and heavy physical presence, we often perceive them as “spiritual”.

ZITA V.: An irrational person, living in the real world, lives for the future, but also lives for memories, sometimes suffocating in them. How important are those marginal states in your work, or are they at all? Is there only infinity that pervades a person’s entire life? How would you describe the importance of “boundary” states for the creative process?

18 J.V.: In an indirect way, borderline experiences doubtlessly have their place in the process of creation though they have no direct influence on my work. I never work under drugs, or even with music. But as my abstract work is purely intuitive, and its associations are seldom consciously explainable, presumably memory plays an important part. Not only my personal memories, either. Most probably, collective mythologies (as described by Carl Gustav Jung) will figure largely in the virtual storage of the artist. When, why, and how these are triggered may be an interesting question to the neurologists, but needs not bother the artist, whose work will not profit by him or her analyzing every neurological process.

© Juliet Vles (Switzerland), Title: “L83 (sanctuary) ”, mixed media, collage on wood, 149 x 112 x 11 cm, 2014

ISSUE 04

© Juliet Vles (Switzerland), Title: “from transCerebral Cerveaulant ” , mixed media, collage on wood, 220 x 200 x 31 cm, 2007

ZITA V.: Watching your works seems they are protected from the strong influences of the external environment. Every moment is felt as a unique touch with the world, each new sensation is a renewal created by the energy emanating from the depths of the spirit. But when we look at your “transCEREBRAL” cycle, we have other thoughts. We live in an age where neuroscience is changing many things in our lives. Tell us more about this creative project, which seems to have been going on for years, and is still under development.

J.V.: You are very right in remarking that there is an essential difference between the abstract wall sculptures and the transCerebral work. Where my abstractions are purely intuitive, the brain-work is an intellectual tour de force into the realm of sociology, anthropology, and satire. In this series, the brain stands as a metaphor for human behavior in general, that is not always as rational as you would expect of a homo called “sapiens”. In my opinion, the dramatic consequences of human misdemeanor are explained by the fact that, while our technical intelligence is very advanced, our social behavior has not really evolved since the times of the chimpanzee. My artistic incarnation of this evolutionary lopsidedness is the MyopicMastermind: a doctor Frankenstein of the atomic age, whose outstanding technical knowledge is topped only by his complete ethical ignorance. Moreover, what havoc modern technology in the hands of moral analphabets can wreak – that we are actually experiencing in real life...

, (trailblazer), Switzerland), from the glassworks , Title: “GW17-22 ” © Juliet Vles ( mixed media, collage, plexiglass on wood, 148 x 130 x 8 cm, 2021

ZITA V.: If you look at the current world situation, what you think is happening now, what is very important to everyone, what you, as a creator, see in the otherness of today’s world, it is not difficult to see that we are experiencing very unusual situations.

J.V.: Yes, the world is profoundly changing. We are approaching the final decision of mankind: if we choose to continue being dominated by nature and follow the law of the jungle, or if we choose to become a civilized race, that stands for freedom, peace, justice, equality, and solidarity. If we do not opt for the second solution, then humanity will soon be extinct. Statistically, chimpanzees with atomic bombs stand no chance of survival. It’s as simple as that.

ZITA V.: If you were to send a message in a time capsule to those who will live in a hundred years, what would it be like?

J.V.: If we do not soon realize that ethical behavior has nothing to do with idealism or sentimentality, but is a sober, empirical necessity for the survival of mankind, then there will be no human alive in a hundred years to receive my time capsule. So my message would be short and simple: “Hi kids, happy to see you’re still there!”