Lucas Schoormans Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of sculptures by Julian Schwarz, a British-born artist based in France. This marks the artist’s first exhibition in the U.S., and the Gallery is delighted to present his work to a new audience.

Julian’s wooden sculptures, or vessels, are each hand carved from single block of wood. Although he draws numerous preparatory sketches for each work, the artistic process truly begins upon his first physically handling the raw material, taking into account the qualities and limitations of the wood itself. Preferring to maintain a more personal relationship with the wood, Julian opts for traditional hand carving tools- chisels, gouges, axe, and cooper’s adze- rather than electric machinery. Raw and natural in their materiality, yet complex in their design, these vessels strike a balance between primitivism and beauty.

In his vessels, Julian seeks to render solidity, energy, and architectural presence. A marriage between geometry, sinuous line, and balance, the shape of each object is at once an assertion of power and an intimation of grace. Dynamic in form and organic in nature, each vessel exhibits a certain strength yet exudes a sense of calm and tranquility. According to the artist, although his works may impart a brutal material quality, he hopes the enveloping forms convey a sense of vital humanity, at once symbolizing our life source as the cornucopia and the amphora, and also our ultimate terrestrial conclusion.