Julian Klincewicz: Visual Artist Behind Beyonce, Kanye West & More

Can you briefly talk about the work you had produced prior to working with Gosha? How does one actually get to the point that these huge artists trust you enough to work with them, in terms of the path you take. How do you get onto those radars?

For sure! I’d been doing a lot of illustrative work and also taking tons of photos all throughout high school. I started doing video kinda late actually, which was also good, because it was so fresh and new that I was just excited to learn all about it and didn’t know or really have any frame of reference of what I wanted to do with it. I just wanted to film everything that was in front of me. In terms of having other people trust you, I think it’s largely just dependent on the collaborator’s taste and if you’re speaking the same artistic language in that moment, which a lot of times just comes down to timing. So much of anything is just being fortunate with timing and along with that, the best way to get on people’s radars, and really just to be a happy person & artist, is to be part of a community. Support the people around you, and usually you’ll be supported by them too. No one makes it alone.

And how do you balance continuing to express your specific, singular vision through so many different campaigns you work on as well as through all the different mediums?

I think the main thing is just trying to be in touch with where I am in this moment. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently and I think it really comes down to being present. I have this idea that most art is a battle against fear. If you’re trying to communicate with people as an artist, a lot of that is at its core about being honest and open to what your experience is and what you’re feeling at any moment. From that core, you translate it and your work can be ironic, it can be funny, it can be really pop, it can be super abstract, it can be anything you want. You shape it into a visual language or whatever that reflects your perspective or that of the brand you’re working with.

In the trailer for Beyoncé’s Netflix documentary Homecoming, there was a Maya Angelou line used that I thought was kind of a perfect touch. Was that your idea?

Wasn’t my idea for the trailer in particular, but I did track down that quote. It’s from an interview she’d [Maya Angelou] done. When I took on the Parkwood project, I wanted to really understand what Beyoncé, the artist, was doing, what she has to say and [how I can] understand her world. I think a large part of that was delving into key cultural figures, and I’ve always been very inspired by Maya Angelou. For the three month period that I was filming for Homecoming, I probably listened to every one of Maya’s interviews, read a bunch of her poems, and listened to her speak her poems. It’s one of the most beautiful things just listening to her because you can’t help but feel alive and feel as if your soul is being nourished. So thinking about that in relation to working on the Homecoming film, she [Maya] felt relevant because so much of my work has to do with humanization, and I think that element is what I had to offer to Beyoncé/Parkwood. I’ve heard a million things about Beyoncé, the artist, but who is Beyoncé, the human? And some how Maya Angelou seemed very relevant to that because she is so human.