Pauline Martinet and Zoé Texereau, France
In their drawings, Martinet & Texereau succeed in sublimating the banality of everyday life through a skillful mixture of clinical precision and sensual poetry. The duo works together according to a rigorous and repeated protocol. Every series begins with a process of surveying and flânerie searching for a balance of the right scenery and adequate light. What results is a falsely quiet tension where a scene of apparent simplicity betrays and underlined complexity through its composition. After this in situ work of scouting and photographing, the artists head to their studio where they are locked into a meticulous process, working in turn on their drawings.
Through their practice, Martinet & Texereau attempt to show and to explore a range of latent spaces, where inactivity becomes the subject and guides the narrative. The artists scrutinize every non-event, and all things commonplace in order to shine a light on what lies in their hidden recesses. In the works of Martinet & Texereau, the human element is marked by its absence, finding a ghostly presence in the evocative and fleeting traces of recent departures, which can be found diffused through every part of the drawing. Thus, their work brings the viewer toward the enigmatic question: what can be seen beyond the ordinary? From this point of interrogation, we enter into a universe where appearance and surface take center stage.
Geometrical facades, the decor of well-kept gardens, impeccable flowerbeds, the elements present in their drawings display, like so many signs of a false tranquility, an artificial sense of exoticism calling for us to question the notions of decoration and setting through the very spaces that give parameters to our lives.
Pauline Martinet and Zoé Texereau graduated from ENSAD Paris, and live and work in Paris.
Through their practice, Martinet & Texereau attempt to show and to explore a range of latent spaces, where inactivity becomes the subject and guides the narrative. The artists scrutinize every non-event, and all things commonplace in order to shine a light on what lies in their hidden recesses. In the works of Martinet & Texereau, the human element is marked by its absence, finding a ghostly presence in the evocative and fleeting traces of recent departures, which can be found diffused through every part of the drawing. Thus, their work brings the viewer toward the enigmatic question: what can be seen beyond the ordinary? From this point of interrogation, we enter into a universe where appearance and surface take center stage.
Geometrical facades, the decor of well-kept gardens, impeccable flowerbeds, the elements present in their drawings display, like so many signs of a false tranquility, an artificial sense of exoticism calling for us to question the notions of decoration and setting through the very spaces that give parameters to our lives.
Pauline Martinet and Zoé Texereau graduated from ENSAD Paris, and live and work in Paris.