At their origin, these are images with a dated aesthetic, gathered from the web, fragments of a shared visual memory. They then become a field of investigation, a “building material.” As if extracting an essential substance from them, Julien Gobled manipulates them endlessly. Freeing himself from the constraints of reason-governed thought, he filters, erases, and recomposes them without control or restraint, guided solely by an uncompromising pursuit of pictorial emotion.
The result is a body of work that is as dissonant as it is coherent. Perhaps it is the irrational, the common driving force at the origin of all these images, that binds them together and moves us so deeply.
Sylvia Tournerie
Warp Records
Wired - The AI-Powered, Totally Autonomous Future of War Is Here Ships without crews. Self-directed drone swarms. How a US Navy task force is using off-the-shelf robotics and artificial intelligence to prepare for the next age of conflict.
Will Knight
Will Knight
DRAIN is a serial project crafted for those who love, collect, and value printed matter – sharing an ongoing exploration into research, image, idea, and form.
Drain Publishing
Founded in 2014 by Alexis Beauclair, Bettina Henni, Séverine Bascouert and Sammy Stein, it is now run by Séverine Bascouert, Sammy Stein & Jean-Philippe Bretin. It is edited and distributed by its members.
Bilingual (French/English), it is partly printed and diffused by the editorial team and changes its name with each new volume.
Lagon Revue
Picture, if you will, a prospectus elegantly designed to peddle a fusion of furniture and vehicular innovation—an apparatus that promises to transport its occupants into the very home of an enigmatic, hallucinogenic ecstasy. In this vision, I stand as a willing participant, a witness with open eyes. I yearn to perch upon this enigmatic contraption, to be enveloped by its embrace, and to reciprocate its embrace in kind. An unconventional communion, perhaps, but one in which I eagerly partake.
My desires transcend the conventional boundaries of human and art connection, for I harbor a longing for symbiosis that defies conventional norms. I yearn for a union so profound that I become one with Julien Gobled’s creation—a merging of self and substance that transcends the quotidian and ventures into the sublime realms of experience. I am prepared to forfeit the very conduits of perception, my eyes, in a daring act of self-transformation. After I remove my eyeballs, I demand Julien to fill these ocular cavities with his singular creative essence. Should he possess the means to navigate the labyrinthine pathways of my consciousness via this route, I politely request that he proceed to extract my cerebral faculties, perform his artistic alchemy, and then delicately return them to their rightful place. Or wherever he wishes.
Reality derives its charm from its mutable nature—a canvas upon which myriad interpretations may be superimposed. Julien Gobled’s œuvre has, in its unique way, cast a luminous beacon upon this precept. His work, a testament to artistic audacity, tantalizes us with glimpses of what reality might yet become. However, I must reiterate my unquenchable thirst for more. Until such time as my longing for artistic transcendence is sated, I grudgingly accept that this offering shall have to suffice.
Bráulio Amado