Julien Tiberi

Julien Tiberi's oeuvre is constructed first of all on the basis of an open and mastered practice of drawing which authorizes him to appropriate an unfixed variety of styles. Drawing in the manner of 19th century caricaturists during the Colonna trial which he attended (The Ghosts of the Defence); borrowing the style used for drawing the court hearing to describe a contemporary art conference (Conference Proposition); or embarking on a history of American drawing through a series representing various viewpoints of the wall in Tijuana which separates Mexico from the United States (all the drawings of Again we cut back...would then be faxed to the address of the Dead Letter Office—the American lost mail centre), he makes his technical mastery not the object of a demonstration, but the assertion of the withdrawal of the author figure. The graphic reference echoes the historical, theoretical, literary or scientific reference and is part of the preparation of a work with many ramifications. Often built using a principle of uchronia (fictional time-frames), consisting in producing a posteriori phonily historical documents so as to re-define the sense of history and play on possible fictions (Le Salon, Homage to Wallace Suitcase Jefferson...), his pieces once and for all call into question the notion of origin as well as that of the original.