About Julie Pailhas
From her years exercising her eye for magazines as a fashion editor, stylist and artistic director (Elle, Glamour, Grazia, Marie Claire, Les Échos, Vogue Taïwan, Milk Décoration), Julie Pailhas has maintained a high expectation for detail and an unconditional passion for staging.
Since returning to Marseille, her hometown, in 2020, this born collector has brought her aesthetic visions to life in her own apartment. Transformed into an intimate gallery, the space, at the heart of the Phocean city, takes the form of a secret refuge. Julie hosts there, by appointment, in the company of her accomplices of the moment: objects, pieces of furniture, sculptures and works of art, signed by young creators, anonymous artists, or well-known designers such as Pierre Jeanneret.
So many “exceptions,” she says, “which bring wonder to everyday life.” So many fragments of stories too. Faced with these emotionally charged objects, she immediately thought of the words of the poet Lamartine, “Inanimate objects, do you have a soul?” which inspired the name of her gallery project. And it is precisely because they have a soul that Julie gives these objects the light they deserve in her gallery-apartment space as on the website and Instagram account of the gallery, evolving showcases of her many treasures. “Each one,” she says, “has its share of mystery and magic, but also an honesty to it, through its material, the traces of the hand of the artist or craftsman who has taken the greatest care of it.”
This is her way of following in the footsteps of her father, a gallery owner and figure of the contemporary art world, the late Roger Pailhas, who passed on to her his curiosity and his taste for the production of his time. Her nearly monochromatic soft palette does justice to the light of her beloved Mediterranean by mixing the vibrations of ceramics, textiles or paint. Through her compositions, Julie creates a landscape with abstract and readily organic forms that invite dream and tranquility. In short, a proposal of an ideal domestic comfort, made to all inspired and eager art collectors.
Marion Vignal