ABOUT

CALILU is a multidisciplinary practice focused on presence, spatial energy, and material transformation. Working under the moniker CALILU, artist Ursula Delaroche-Vernet deliberately shifts attention away from personal narrative and toward the immediacy of the work itself. The practice resists storytelling in favor of direct sensory engagement, privileging process, tempo, and material response.

The Work

The work is developed through sustained acts of making that register the conditions of the present moment. Shifting across various latitudes, the practice responds to immediate sensory conditions, light, sound, music, and material availability, allowing unexpected combinations to emerge through intuitive action. Layers of oil, collage, found elements, and digital distortion accumulate through action rather than premeditation, capturing the kinetic shifts in environment, rhythm, and spatial tension.

The "Visual DJ" Methodology

CALILU operates across painting, material collage, and digital assemblage. The term “Visual DJ” describes an approach in which images and materials are sampled, disrupted, and recomposed in real time, allowing intuition, tempo, and sensory input to guide formal decisions. Digital processes are not treated as virtual escape, but as another material layer, subject to friction, interruption, and instability.

The Heritage

While the practice is resolutely contemporary, it is informed by a historical proximity to painting. As a descendant of three generations of the Vernet and Delaroche painter families, she engages this lineage indirectly. Her practice acknowledges this historical proximity while refusing direct reference, shifting emphasis toward material process and immediacy.

The Process

Working with recycled materials and mixed media, CALILU develops projects as evolving series. Each body of work advances through repetition and variation, refusing fixed meaning in favor of atmospheric and structural intensity. Dividing time between Los Angeles, Munich, and Italy, she continues to expand a practice rooted in presence, material experimentation, and embodied perception.