Maude Maris

Maude Maris is represented by the Pi Artworks Gallery in London and Istanbul. She works in Paris and regularly exhibits her works in France (40 mcube in Rennes, the Centre d’Art Chapelle Jeanne d’Arc in Thouars, MAMC in Saint Etienne...) and abroad (New York, London, Rome, Düsseldorf). Her works are presented in the collections of Frac Auvergne, lower Normandy, upper Normandy and the Fine Art Museum in Rennes. In 2010, she completed a post-graduate diploma at the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf, during which she collaborated with architects.

THROUGH MAUDE MARIS' EYES

Faced with these non-perishable still lifes and embalmed objects, the viewer is caught between the perspective illusion of a glossy area and the difficulty in identifying its scale. The different steps of fabrication, molding, photography and painting created an erosion of the original object, offering it an evocative power detached from its initial use. It thereby becomes open to interpretation, a quasi-abstract element that still maintains its sculptural properties. It is in these spaces of artifices that Maude Maris employs us to experience what we see, with a silent painting in which a light mystery resides.

ÉQUINOXES

Maude Maris’s paintings speak of sculpture. It is to create the volume of these images that she puts in place an entire modeling process and mise en scene of everyday objects, enhanced by a sculptural element thanks to its successive handling. Through the fossilization process used, she reconstructs fantasized visions nourished with documentary research ranging from an Anatolian archeological site to photographs of modern sculptors’ workshops. She thereby fashions a personal mythology, all the while creating ambiguous realism.

What gave you the desire to become part of Camille Fournet’s équinoxes project?
To begin, it was my encounter with Françoise and Jean-Luc Déchery, and their interest in contemporary art. Their commitment to art is of the same breadth as that which they give to their brand. This sensibility can be found in the concerns that we share: attention to material and, above all, this almost architectural conception in working in leather goods, carried by the designers of Camille Fournet’s design studio.

Following your visit to the factory, what are the sources of inspiration that fueled your work?
I proposed installing a painting on one of the wall spaces of the boutique. To go back to architecture, I conceive this as a hollow molding of our existences, and my personal work could be defined as Dominique Païni did, by a sort of “negative of everyday life.” It’s thus natural that I used reliefs of cut pieces of leather for the background of the canvas, which are negative traces of the first step completed in creating a handbag. To prolong this “hollow” though, I like to also consider the bag as a container whose shape is modelled by the sum of the gestures that we apply to it.

How does one decipher this painting ?
The cut leather piece becomes confused with the background due to an optical illusion, which itself appears to have holes and nicks. And in response to this cut, we see the first steps of fabrication, certain pigmented objects that emerge in the foreground, imprints of my own movements at the workshop, traces of living materials, all of which allow the viewer a wider interpretation.

First act, Maude Maris, 2018.
Photo : Rebecca Fanuele.

Premier Acte
Close up
Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele

CAMILLE FOURNET ENJOYS PLAYING WITH MATERIALS AND COLORS. WE LOVE CREATORS, THEIR INVENTIVENESS, THEIR ABILITY AND THE WONDER THEY'RE CAUSING.