Julien Prévieux

Julien Prévieux writes letters of non-motivation to refuse jobs, he crashes himself in the city, he adds special effects to Hollywood films or manages to get the fingerprints of the French Minister of the Interior. In his own way, he is trying to decipher a world marked by deep ideological changes and his methods show us ways of living in it. Between absurd humor and revolt attempts, the strategies he develops are based on voluntary confrontation of a lonely individual with a given system (architectural, social, economic …) Through a series of geometric paintings or diagrams that (mis)interprets the great texts of political economy, he continues today his research on the notion of work and production value.

Julien Prévieux was born in 1974. He holds a master in biology and graduated in the schools of Fine Arts of Grenoble and Paris. His work was recently presented in Force de l’Art 02 in Paris, in the 10th Istanbul Biennial, in the San Francisco Art Institute, in Plateau Frac Ile-de-France and in the Kunsthaus Dresden. He has published the Letters of non-motivation (Zones / La Découverte) publishing in 2007.

Non-motivation Letters

Tirelessly pursued for several years, this project shows Julien Prévieux saying no to offers of work found in the newspapers. Restated day after day, his absence of motivation becomes a full-time job, with each letter an excuse for a different stylistic exercise attacking the inherent absurdity of this kind of ritual. Bartleby, a pensioner, a paranoiac, a workaholic: the artist / author assumes a host of roles allowing for endlessly vehement reasons for turning down the job in question. The replies sent back by the companies — sometimes automatic, sometimes personal — fuel a dialogue of the deaf, a verbal delirium in which the entire recruitment system is revealed as defective.