Just Kids

This exhibition is a contemporary salon, inspired by 19th and 20th century Paris, but where progressive artistic techniques are encouraged. Opposing the strict rules of the Paris court while championing the Academy’s rigorous attention to technique, the aim of this exhibition is to push artists to break boundaries and exceed in developing individualist styles for themselves while encouraging the highest form of technique.

The French Academy of Fine Arts was the established center of the French art world from the 15th century until the late 19th century. Engineered with a mission to teach sculpture and painting in the classical, traditional, and canonical style and to offer a place for its students to exhibit their work. Achieving a monopoly on the art production in France due to its power as the only public art exhibition in France that was permitted and gaining control over the aesthetic production of the artists at the time due to the regime like and rigid focus on “academic” art that was outdated and widely critiqued, the French Academy of Fine Arts attracted a lot of criticism from artists who existed outside the status quo.

These artists, who were at the forefront of the French Avant-Garde movements (mainly the Impressionists) were fed up with the Academy’s control over artistic production and aesthetic preferences and eventually founded their own exhibition spaces: The Salon des Independants (founded 1884) and the Salon d’Automne (founded 1903). Creating an amalgamation of the two opposing forces in 19th-20th century France, that is the classic technique and the avantgarde instinct, “Just Kids” seeks to engender a space wherein artists who are thinking about and implementing both in their work can exhibit.

The show includes only painters and sculptors who work in technical styles similar to what was respected in the Paris Academic Salon. While the curators are critical of the institutional weight the schools commanded in the French art world, they respect the tradition and the aesthetic that derives from it. This show espouses a belief in art’s cyclical nature and shows that while movements and styles have exhausted themselves, the foundation for good art comes from the combination of concept and execution.

Giving half the artists their first show and every artist aged under 25, the salon is full of exuberant talent and raw technique. Undergirding the display of early-stage artists is a belief that these names will obtain a career of longevity and success.

Lorenzo Amos | Natasha Bourne  | Charlie Gosling | Freya Jones | Azya LaShelle | Asher Liftin | Jara Lopez | Baldassare Ruspoli | Sage Schachter | Jonah Schwimmer | Hedi Stanton | Joseph Wilson