At Opera Gallery Paris this March, Julien Rubat’s latest works filled the space with layered fields of color and texture. The canvases, varied in scale but unified in process, resist clear representation. Yet, for many viewers, they evoke something familiar: maps of unseen landscapes, cellular structures, shifting geological formations. The paintings hover between the organic and the digital, the precise and the accidental, a tension that reflects the artist’s own trajectory.

Born in Chambéry in 1980, Rubat initially trained in technology before turning to painting. A six-year period in Los Angeles proved formative, allowing him to refine a process that blends control and unpredictability. He layers tissue paper and pigment, presses it onto canvas in a transfer technique akin to printmaking, then peels it away, revealing sculptural surfaces shaped as much by chance as by intent.

Now based in the French Alps, Rubat has exhibited internationally, with shows in Los Angeles, New York, Seoul, Paris, and Madrid. In 2020, he was awarded a residency and fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center.