My name is Jodie Rudaz. I’m a painter who once dreamed she was a singer.
I was born in Monthey (VS) on January 20, 1996, fifty years after David Lynch, who was born on January 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana, and passed away in January 2025, four days before our birthdays.
Both David Lynch and I were born under a Capricorn sun with a Scorpio rising (on the 20th of January you can be either an Aquarius or a Capricorn sun, depending on the time of your birth).
Recently, before receiving visitors in my studio, a thought crossed my mind : « trying to describe my own work is like trying to describe my own smell ».
Maybe it came from anxiety, or from the frustration I feel when I struggle to write about my practice, especially since I normally am always able to write where I am not able to talk. Here, it’s the contrary, and I often remain unsatisfied with my presentation texts. Still I write them, trying to catch something that’s inherently flying.
Once I used to write about painting in a way that was looking for answers and not giving them.
But I suppose I can give some answers too.
Painting, for me, is a way of slowing down, of spending time with an image.
I reinterpret fragments drawn from pop culture or personal memories. Pop culture to me is a shared visual vocabulary that serves as both material and mirror.
I work with acrylic, which allows me to build smooth layers of color and subtle transitions that echo the luminosity of screens, but with a human touch that resists their speed.
Figures and symbols often float in ambiguous spaces, somewhat suspended between the real and the imagined.
They carry within them notions of desire, absence or nostalgia as fleeting, but sometimes profound, feelings.
Painting them is a way of giving these dazzling sensations a quiet, lasting presence.
Regarding my work, this is what I wish to describe to you.
Regarding my smell, I’ve been wearing the same perfume since I was sixteen : Crystal Noir from Versace. Right now, my bottle is almost empty and kinda shattered because it fell in the sink.
Education
2016-2019
BA Fine Arts
écal
2019-2021
MA Fine Arts European Arts Ensemble écal
Awards
2020 Walter & Eve Kent Foundation
2019 Visarte Vaud
2024
– I’ll be back, EYE (Espace d’arts Yverdonnois), Yverdon (duo show with Axel Mattart)
2023
– Espace ContreContre, St-Maurice (live music)
2022
– Art Genève Music Chamber, Grand Théâtre de Genève (live music)
– HumuS Gallery, Lausanne (live music)
– Espace Noir, St-Imier (live music)
– One And One Day Of A Million festival, Baden (live music)
2021
– L’Imprimerie/Espace du Fond, Lausanne (group exhibition)
– Ecal Music Club, Lausanne (live music)
– February Blues, Lausanne (group exhibition)
– Flowstone Space, Lausanne (group exhibition)
2020
– Valentin 61, Lausanne (group exhibition)
– Des Seins à Dessein, Espace Arlaud, Lausanne (group exhibition)
2019
– Galerie elac, Renens (live musical performance)
– Diplomas 2019, galerie elac, Renens (group exhibition)
– A minuit au bar du grand hôtel des Palmes, galerie elac, Renens (group exhibition)
Jodie Rudaz 