Julieta Proto Boca

She paints what she wants to see. Philip Guston says a painter has two options: to paint themselves or the world. In her paintings, Julieta chooses to paint a world she desires, an imaginary world unfolded in an image. She is fascinated by the fine line that divides the pictorial—the operation that, in seconds, can transform the figurative into the abstract.

Her works are built from a combination of traditional painting elements with materials related to drawing or graffiti. Her images emerge from distorting figurations of photographs from her everyday life and travels, linking them with elements of her dream world and restoring her memories through toned washes and textures. This articulation often produces a pareidolic effect, where abstraction and figuration balance on the threshold, allowing space for letting go and facilitating self-discovery through surprise.

Text is a constant element that plays a fundamental role in developing her themes. It often reveals information about the construction of the image and narrative. Pictorially, it also occupies that liminal space where, at times, it becomes unreadable and structures the initial diagram of image construction. The texts come from song lyrics, her daily readings, and her thoughts.