Peter Juul is born and raised in Aalborg, where he also lives and works today. Peter Juul is educated from Northern Jutland Art School in both painting and graphics and have among others been teaching at the Culture School and CFU in Aalborg. Peter Juul has furthermore had several visits to Africa where he has made art projects in Namibia and Zambia. His visits has given inspiration to his artistic work, where he in his paintings leaves traces of comments to the way people live. Peter insists that his paintings shouldn’t give the answers but that they will invite the viewer to interpret.
‘In Peter Juul’s paintings one often meets strange graphic figures, whose recognizable characteristics are reduced to a minimum. They are facing us and steadily hold our gaze. They force us to share the presence in the space which they created between them and the viewer. The paintings vibrate between absence and closeness. The large surfaces of colour appear as a space we ourselves have to fill with meaning.
The presence in Peter Juul’s paintings is intense and almost brutal. The figures in the paintings approach us – they are always facing the viewers – in a way that is so quiet and attentive that it sometimes borders on being disturbing. They carry the content of the paintings, with their expression being so gutted and yet, so strangely familiar. They do not have one meaning, but as many as you can read into them. They change along with the viewer and appear in their own way to be as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa, for they ask just as many questions. Do they smile? – If so, why? Are they people, angels, or ancient sculptures? The answer, as it is with many other things, is in the eye of the beholder. There is no final answer to who or when or where, so in order to solve the riddle that is presented by the paintings you have to move them to your own reality; they are changing with our own change. The absence of clear answers is ever present in our meeting with these paintings – but Peter Juul’s works offer a constant opportunity for a well-rounded aesthetic experience.’
Ingelise Mogensen, Art historian
