"I am trying to work on images that would evoke scenes of everyday life in New York with a Surrealist twist, bringing some of my French background into the mix," Julie Curtiss told Juxtapoz in the Spring 2019 issue, just ahead our hew new show, Wildlife, opening at Anton Kern on April 26, 2019. "For example, my love for Degas depiction of ordinary life in nineteenth-century Paris." In that interview we talked about Curtiss's ability to channel both classic and contemporary traits into one painting, with a rare plunge into Surrealism that doesn't feel retro, but entirely fresh and new.
The curation to have Curtiss show at the same time as David Shrigley is a great idea, as both artists touch on humor in interesting, albeit completely different ways. In our conversation with Curtiss, she notes about humor in her work, "Life itself is surreal for me, and I get my inspiration from daydreaming. When I take a stroll in public spaces, weirdly a lot of ideas come to me, or when I take the subway. I like to observe people and funny situations. I also look at art in museums, galleries, and in books. I like the strange still life, the corner of a painting, the close crop of two hands touching." 
As the gallery points out: The artist’s sharp, incisive painting technique is on full display; each blade of grass, each fiber of a carpet, and every strand in a coil of tresses, is rendered with intricate and rigorous care. Her witty visual puns play with our ideas and expectations about the body, encouraging exploration of the ambiguity of life itself and our relation to each other, to nature, and to our primal instincts. The Chicago Imagists and Surrealists are immediately recognizable influences, but internalized by Curtiss and rendered in a style that is decidedly and uniquely her own.
"The interesting thing for me, while revisiting the Surrealist language, is to turn that female archetype inside out, shifting perception, like the model descending from the pedestal and picking up a brush," Curtiss told us. From the looks of this new show, she is definitely a breath of fresh air on the genre.
The exhibition coincides with the release of Curtiss’ new artist book, The Dinner Party, published by Spheres Publications, and a limited edition silkscreen print, Escargot.
