On pourrait définir un modèle comme une simplification systématique qui permet de figurer et d’organiser le réel. Ce terme recoupe deux interprétations qui pointent chacune une direction opposée dans le trajet reliant l’idée à l’objet : il peut s’agir de la description d’une réalité (de l’objet vers l’idée) ou d’un schéma directeur (de l’idée vers l’objet). Descriptif ou directif, le paradigme du modèle parcourt l’œuvre de Raphaël Julliard et explique en partie l’hétérogénéité des productions de cet artiste qui vit et travaille à Genève.

Wrong lead — Raphaël Julliard first made a name for himself by applying a globalized economic model to the art market. At the 2005 Fiac art fair, at the Art & Public gallery stand, he managed to sell a thousand red monochromes made by Chinese workers in 24 hours, for the modest sum of €100 each. What could have been the starting point for a career as an entrepreneurial artist adapting the possibilities of globalization to artistic production quickly proved to be a red herring. Julliard was less interested in formulating an ambiguous critique of capitalism than in seeing the experiment through to its conclusion. This interest in a thoroughly tested experiment can be found in the Sandwich project, a making-of (2009). Based on a reflection on the division of labor, the artist decided to make a ham and butter sandwich on his own. He sowed and harvested wheat to make flour, then bread, assisted in the slaughter of a pig to make ham, and milked a cow to churn milk and obtain butter. By creating a finished object himself, the various stages of which are documented on film, Julliard moves away from an artistic activity that relies on subcontracting in favor of a craft practice where the producer is intimately connected to what he produces.

Experimentation — Creating a piece in an experimental manner implies that the attempt has a beginning and an end, and that its progression is planned in advance. This is the case for most of the series of drawings that the artist produces during his travels, which are a way of modeling his wanderings. Most often, their number is limited by the number of pages in the notebook in which he draws and by the time available to finish it. The 60 drawings of pure expression (2009), for example, were created in a notebook, with the constraint of not repeating the same pattern for each drawing. This system, which characterizes most of the Geneva-based artist's work, is defined by biogeographer Jared Diamond as an autocatalytic model, meaning that it finds the sources of its development within itself. Derived from chemistry, this term is used by Diamond to describe how a civilization finds the seeds of its growth in its immediate environment. By extension, this also explains why any type of journey is an opportunity for Julliard to produce new forms.

Scientific models are valued for their accuracy, and it is not uncommon for them to find other applications in the humanities. Although, in all fields, the precision of a model guarantees its validity, Julliard's paradigm is often deliberately chosen for its imprecision. Thus, by using a play on words to create a piece, he confronts a model that paradoxically finds its effectiveness in polysemic ambiguities. The dynamic of the work Dur à faire (2009), a set of iron rods as if knotted by hand in the middle, is based on the tension between the two meanings of the homonym faire/fer, where the act is opposed to the resistance of the material. From a communicational point of view, the model invoked would be considered null and void, but Julliard simply needs to shift it into the aesthetic field for it to find its full effectiveness.

Analogies — Applying models is not Julliard's only approach, as some pieces are based on analogies between different fields. The piece entitled Schrödinger’s Cat (2009) highlights the connections between Erwin Schrödinger’s 1935 thought experiment and the funeral rites of Pharaonic Egypt. Noting that in both cases the aim is to maintain a state in which a being is both dead and alive, the artist traveled to Egypt to mummify a cat using ancient techniques, wrapping it in bandages inscribed with the Austrian physicist’s equation. By bringing together science and belief within a mummy, Julliard once again produces an object whose dynamic lies in its ability to embody a paradox.

Alternately embalmer, musician, gallery owner, ascetic, businessman, theorist, traveler, craftsman, prophet, and exhibition curator, Julliard experiments with different situations that in turn produce a wide variety of objects. No particular program seems to govern this profusion of forms, except perhaps... the desire to surpass the eclecticism of Martin Kippenberger's work ?