(Pour le texte français, faire défiler jusqu’en bas)

For the title of her first solo show at Praz-Delavallade, Maude Maris has chosen Hieromancy, a reference to the ancient practice of divination using offerings to the gods, in particular studying the entrails of sacrificed animals. The exhibition that bears this rare, contextualised term is comprised of around one dozen paintings of figures suffering from rosacea, their abnormally flushed complexions shot through with pink, red and burgundy. Each blends, more often than not, into a cool, blurry blue background. Right from the start of her career some fifteen years ago, Maris implemented a precise ritual involving painted objects – one to which she has always remained true – and yet this series marks a departure. It is as if the images have established a mysteriously connection to the occult world, one which unsettles notions of scale, disturbs perception and disrupts dominion.

As far as dimensions are concerned, Maris usually sees things on a very big or a very small scale and only rarely in the intermediate formats on show here. Each size offers a different chromatic experience, from the fluid palette of the largest paintings in which the colours are so diluted that the canvas seems like a fine, quivering skin, to the smallest formats that concentrate the subject in an intense palette of colours that forges a captivating relationship with the viewer.

– Laetitia Chauvin

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Le vendredi 13 mars, j’avais rendez-vous avec Maude pour voir ses dernières peintures ; j’arrivai à Malakoff en début d’après-midi. J’étais déjà venue et je me souvenais bien de l’immeuble comme de son étrange façade aveugle. Je sonnai à Maris avant de monter dans l’ascenseur, les mains derrière le dos jusqu’au seuil de sa porte.

En entrant, je ne portais pas de masque ; nous ne nous sommes pas non plus embrassées. Je me suis lavé les mains dans la cuisine, pendant que Maude préparait un café. Son atelier n’avait pas changé depuis ma dernière visite, trois ans plus tôt ; il était sobre, assez austère je dirais, et le volume immense de la salle de peinture m’avait encore surprise après un si étroit couloir : les plafonds étaient hauts, toujours, et la baie vitrée ouvrait sur la terrasse déserte, son ciel. Dans les étagères, s’alignaient de minuscules figurines colorées tandis qu’aux murs, rayonnaient ce jour-là, les grandes toiles carnaires.

D’abord, on a bu un café en parlant du virus, du cours des choses dans le monde et de nos projets bientôt suspendus : Maude se demandait si elle pourrait partir le lendemain, à Istanbul, où sa résidence allait débuter dans un lycée ; quant à moi, j’essayais d’évaluer tout ce que pourraient changer à ma vie bancale une fermeture des frontières, un couvre-feu, un confinement, ou des morts – j’étais alors en vadrouille entre les appartements des plus gentils de mes amis.

Assise sur un tabouret, au centre de la pièce, si vide, je ne savais pas bien où regarder, mais on parlait d’archéologie et de Çatal Höyük, un site Anatolien mis au jour en 1951. Maude m’expliquait que dans ce vaste village néolithique, sans rues, on accédait aux maisons par les toits ; que les morts étaient inhumés sous les planchers, dans les fours, les banquettes, les corps des nouveau-nés ensevelis sous les seuils. Elle me racontait aussi que tous les quatre- vingt ans environ, les maisons étaient détruites et rebâties à l’identique, sur les fondations des précédentes.

On parlait de ça, et d’Alice. Maude m’indiquait le titre provisoire de l’exposition à venir, « Flamingo Croquet », qui ranima instantanément en moi les images affolantes du film de Walt Disney : la reine et les têtes coupées, le rouge dégoulinant des pinceaux sur les cartes à jouer. On regardait ses peintures. Si j’avais pu, j’aurais tourné autour. Si j’avais pu les tenir dans la main, je les aurais retournées. Je ne sais pas si Maude les regardait ainsi mais j’avais le sentiment inexplicable qu’elle ne me disait pas tout.

On parlait des motifs, des couleurs et de la technique, et puis de ce qu’elle veut dans la peinture, qui me touche. Maude aspire à peindre ce qu’on ne pourrait pas voir dans la réalité : le détail et l’ensemble. Je me demandais en l’écoutant si donc ses peintures ne relevaient pas de la réalité. Elle m’avait écrit dans son mail : « J’y vois aussi une manière d’être au monde, d’être à la fois en son cœur et de prendre du recul. De vivre un événement émotionnellement et avec distance, d’être dans le corps et hors du corps, une impression constante d’être à l’intérieur des choses tout en y étant extérieure ».

Je ne savais pas si ces phrases énonçaient des considérations théoriques, ou si Maude parlait de son propre sentiment d’exister, et ce flou me plaisait. On parlait de cette vision qu’elle invente ; on en parlait quand son téléphone a sonné. Elle a d’abord regardé de qui il s’agissait ; avant même de décrocher, elle eut l’air inquiet. J’entendais ensuite ce qui se disait à l’autre bout du fil : c’était sa galeriste, je supposais, qui parlait très fort et trop vite, avec un léger accent. Je comprenais que Maude devait prendre un avion en début de soirée, car le lendemain, tous les vols internationaux seraient suspendus. Elle a raccroché, enfin, un peu bouleversée, hésitante. Moi je pensais encore à son mail : « C’est la peinture elle-même qui me permet de figurer le fragment et le tout, de saisir la matière et l’immatériel ensemble ».

Je ne sais plus comment les choses se sont dites, mais tout s’est fait très naturellement il me semble : on a décidé que je resterais chez elle jusqu’à son retour. Maude a préparé ses bagages, jetant quelques vêtements dans une valise, emballant soigneusement son matériel et quelques livres. Elle était anxieuse ; je voyais ses mains trembler en fermant ses sacs. On a convenu que je m’occuperais du chat qu’elle n’avait plus le temps d’emmener chez son ami comme prévu. J’avais quelques affaires dans ma voiture, et je me disais que, pour écrire ce texte, ce serait parfait de vivre avec les oeuvres.

À 18h, Maude quittait précipitamment l’atelier pour l’aéroport ; il faisait encore jour. Le ciel était d’un rose éclatant à travers la baie vitrée. Nous ne le savions pas mais les choses et les gens resteraient là où ils étaient pendant presque deux mois. J’ai commencé par faire des courses, démesurées pour une personne seule, puis j’ai changé les draps et fait le ménage. Mon asthme chronique m’avait rendue absolument paranoïaque vis à vis du virus, mais aussi de la poussière et des pollens, et je ne sortirai pas durant les deux semaines suivantes.

Je décidai de vivre et dormir dans la grande salle de peinture où je trainai le matelas de

Maude. Les changements de pièce m’inquiétaient : j’avais le sentiment que quelque chose arrivait dans mon dos. Rester au même endroit atténuait cette impression, désagréable – ma paranoïa. N’étant jamais parvenue à baisser le volet roulant, je me levais avec le jour tous les matins. Je suivais les nouvelles du monde. Je lisais les livres de Maude, en particulier des essais philosophiques compliqués que je n’ouvre pas d’habitude. Je ne voyais pas encore vraiment son travail sur les murs, mais j’avais le sentiment net que ça me regardait.

C’est avec le jour, le cinquième, que tout commença à vaguer visiblement. Je commençais à voir le monde comme les peintures invitaient à le faire, cela allait peut-être même un peu au- delà de ce que Maude pensait avoir accompli. Les objets des tableaux, mes affaires, le mobilier et le matériel se dilataient dans la pièce : leurs contours s’effaçaient sans qu’ils disparaissent – mes regards fuyants les y avaient autorisés. C’était un peu comme si l’extérieur et l’intérieur des choses et des êtres – moi, le chat – se dissociaient et devenaient préhensibles ensemble et distinctement pourtant. Il n’y avait plus de miroir : il avait fondu, disparu, aucun éclat non plus ne jonchait le sol à mes pieds. La chose était son image, son image son égal.

Au fil des jours confinés, sous les formes osseuses, enduites, peintes et magnifiées, je voyais l’intérieur : c’est à dire le temps des morts, les jarres, des jarrets, les pieds veineux des ancêtres, les chiens savants, les chouettes, les enfants, leurs armes et des godes. Je voyais s’envoler un hibou, danser des os, s’animer les bustes mutiques et flotter les draps du lit des fantômes. Je voyais grandir le monde, sans la nécessité d’une mise au point entre ce qui m’était étranger ou propre. Je vivais désormais dans cet espace vaste, clair, autrefois tranché par une grande glace sans tain.

Après la deuxième semaine, mes provisions étaient épuisées et je ne pensais plus à manger, toute à ma nouvelle existence, libérée des factions et des distances. C’est le chat qui me tira enfin de cette extase dangereuse : je le voyais amaigri, faible et c’est pour le nourrir que je décidai de sortir. Mais, à peine arrivée dehors, au pied de l’immeuble, sur le trottoir, je m’effondrai. D’abord, je crois que personne n’osa approcher tant mon corps défait était inquiétant. Quelqu’un cependant appela les pompiers qui me conduisirent à l’hôpital où je passai quelques jours. Une amie s’occupa du chat par la suite. Bien que j’ignore ce qui a pu se produire, je conserve une vision très claire, précise, de ces jours auxquels je repense aujourd’hui avec nostalgie. Je n’avais pas raconté à Maude cette histoire avant d’écrire ce texte, pour son exposition.

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On Friday, March 13, I had plans with Maude to see her latest paintings; I got to Malakoff in the early afternoon. I’d already been and what I remembered of the building was the odd lack of windows on one side. I buzzed Maris before going up the elevator, my hands behind my back until I was in front of her door.
As I entered, I had no mask on; we didn’t kiss each other’s cheeks. I washed my hands in the kitchen while Maude made coffee. Her workspace hadn’t changed since my last visit, three years earlier; it was stark, I might say rather spartan, and the painting studio’s immense proportions caught me by surprise after such a cramped hallway: the ceilings were still high, and the bay window overlooked the empty terrace, its sky. On the shelves were tiny painted figurines and, on the walls, radiant that day, the huge flesh-eating paintings.
We started by drinking coffee and talking about the virus, the way things were going in the world, and our projects soon to be put on hold: Maude wondered whether she would be able to leave the next day for Istanbul where her residency at a school was supposed to begin; as for me, I was trying to figure out everything that might change in my precarious life—border closings, curfews, lockdowns, deaths. At that time I was drifting through the various apartments of my friends.
Sitting on a stool, in the middle of the rather empty room, I wasn’t sure where to look, but we talked about archaeology and Çatal Höyük, an Anatolian site excavated in 1951. Maude explained that in this sprawling Neolithic village, for lack of streets, people entered homes by roofs; the dead were buried beneath the floorboards, hearths, platforms in larger rooms, the bodies of newborns were placed under doorsteps. She also told me about how, every eighty years or so, the houses were torn down and rebuilt exactly as they had been, on the foundations of the previous ones.
We talked about that, and about Alice. Maude showed me the provisional title of her forthcoming exhibition, “Flamingo Croquet,” which immediately reminded me of those terrifying images from the Disney film: the queen and her cut-off heads, the red on the paintbrushes splattering onto the playing cards. We looked at her paintings. If I could have, I would have walked around them. If I could have held them in my hand, I would have turned them over. I don’t know whether Maude was looking at them that way, but I had an inexplicable feeling that she wasn’t telling me everything.
We talked about patterns, colors, and technique, and then what she sought out in painting, which I found touching. Maude was set on painting what could not be seen in reality: the part, the whole. I wondered as I listened to her whether this meant her paintings didn’t draw on reality. She wrote in her email: “I also see painting as a way to be in the world, to be both deep within it and properly far away from it. To experience an event emotionally and at a distance, to be inside it and outside it, a constant feeling of being on the interior while being exterior to it.”
I wasn’t sure if these lines were articulating theoretical considerations, or if Maude was talking about her own experience of existing, and this uncertainty didn’t displease me. We talked about this vision she was creating; we were talking about it when her phone rang. She looked at who it was; even before she picked up, she seemed worried. Then I heard the voice on the other end of the line: it was her gallery’s owner, I imagine, talking very loudly and hurriedly, with a slight accent. I understood that Maude had to take a plane early this evening, because the next day all international flights would be canceled. She finally hung up, a bit shaken, uncertain. I was still thinking about her email: “Painting itself is what allowed me to figure out the part and whole, to get a grip on both the material and the immaterial.”
I don’t remember how we settled on it, but everything seemed to come together very organically: we decided that I would stay at her place until she came back. Maude packed her bags, throwing together a few clothes, carefully stowing her supplies and a few books. She was anxious; I could see her hands trembling as she zipped her suitcases shut. We agreed that I’d watch the cat she didn’t have time to take to her friend as originally planned. I had a few things in my car and I figured that, to write this text, it would be perfect to live with these artworks.
At 6 pm Maude rushed out of the art studio for the airport; it was still daylight out. The sky through the bay window was a striking pink. We had no way to know that things and people would stay where they were for nearly two months. I started by doing the shopping, far too much for a single person, then I changed the sheets and cleaned the place. My chronic asthma meant I would be paranoid not just about the virus, but also about dust and pollen, and so I ended up not leaving the place again for the next two weeks.
I decided to live and sleep in the huge painting studio where I’d dragged Maude’s mattress. Changing rooms worried me: I felt like something was happening behind my back. Staying in the same space staved off this disagreeable impression—my paranoia. I never managed to pull down the roller shade, and so I rose with the sun every morning. I kept up with the world news. I read Maude’s books, especially those complicated philosophical essays I wasn’t in the habit of poring through. I didn’t really see her work on the walls anymore, but I distinctly felt it watching me.
It was during the day, the fifth one, that everything started to tremble visibly. I started seeing the world the way the paintings invited me to; it might have gone a bit beyond what Maude was hoping to have accomplished. The paintings’ subjects, my belongings, the furniture, and the materials began expanding in the room: their outlines faded but did not quite disappear—my fleeting glances had given them free rein. It was a bit like the inside and the outside of things and beings—myself, the cat—were dissociating and becoming prehensible as a whole and even distinctly. There was no mirror anymore: it had melted, vanished, no reflected gleam stretched across the floor beneath my feet anymore. The thing was its image, its image its equal.
Over the course of my days in lockdown, under the skeletal, primed, painted, and magnified forms, I saw the inside: that is, the time of the dead, jars, shards, forefathers’ veined feet, trick dogs, owls, children, their weapons, and dildos. I saw a tufted owl take flight, bones rise up, mute busts grow animated, and the sheets of ghosts’ beds billow. I saw the world grow, without any need for any distinction between what was odd or familiar for me. I now lived in this immense, bright space that had once been divided by a huge, unsilvered mirror.
After the second week, my supplies had run out and I wasn’t even thinking about eating anymore, just about my new existence, freed from factions and distances. What finally pulled me out of this dangerous rapture was the cat: I saw how thin and weak it was and feeding it was why I decided to venture out. But no sooner had I gotten outside, past the doorstep, on the sidewalk, than I collapsed. At first I think nobody dared to get close given how unnerving my body was. But someone still called emergency services and I was taken to the hospital where I spent several days. A friend took care of the cat after that. Even though I have no idea what could have possibly happened, I still have a very distinct, precise image of those days that I still think back on with nostalgia. I didn’t tell Maude this story before writing this text for her exhibition.

Joël Riff, 2018

Curator at Moly-Sabata / Fondation Albert Gleizes and writer

Who Wants to Look at Somebody’s Face ?

Maude Maris’ paintings delicately convey sculpture to images. She is acting upon the curiositiesthat began last year in Paris, of which led her to examine four pioneers of modern sculpture, by observing their use of photographyand as a result, is inspired by the revolution of the modelled contours, whichhas translated into her painting bringing forth the use of new textures. In order to sharpen her attention even more, today the painter focuses on a British muse.

Barbara Hepworth suddenly appeared in the twentieth century, as maternal and radical. That’s a woman who strives for the anonymity of the genre in terms of its creation. For her, art is neither masculine, nor feminine; it’s either good or bad. Let us celebrate the oeuvre, as well asthe figure that she represents for all the generations, regardless of their gender. Her humanityis successfully embodied in this free and optimistic abstraction.

Maude Maris thus, finds in Barbara’s work the energy to crosswaters,grasping to groundthis light which is so gently caressedby the Cornish coastal breeze; the kind of which enveloped this determined icon to work. These natural conditions shape the mineral epidermis of these pieces as much as the chisel does. Objects within this landscape, offered to the sun and to the wind. Every other element wanting to add its mark is invited to do so.

Barbara Hepworth frequently worked outdoors. The garden served as her studio, and the fluctuating weather of Cornwall contributed to the modelling of her statues. Her production is intentionally tactile, provoking the desire to touch. The hand is omnipresent, and it is in some case explicit as the motive, whereas on the other hand evoked by the reserve of curbs. Thus, the voluptuousness implants itself in our hands.

Maude Maris stimulates through her compositions, the prehensile capacities of the eye. New elements appear on the background of the paintings this time, far less calculated but always matter-oriented. Sometimes even fiery and re-calibrated in comparison to their more discreet predecessors. Their superficiality is confined by the framings, which let us guess the existence of the backstage of the shooting, through respecting the luminosity of the outdoors in these miniatures.

Barbara Hepworth never made a model for her sculptures unless she was commissioned.Because even if this one proved to be a success, it was the risk that it would be a failure once enlarged. Here, no hierarchy divides the elements of a production by their size indeed worked with great diversity.On the contrary, every sculpture is relative to the other by their size. A small sculpture appears charming, whereas the large, tragic.

Maude Maris now relaxesher processesand carefully selects picksamong the photographic archives of the Lady more freely. Simultaneously, her definition of the space of work is expanding and gently lowering the horizon, and a greater surface is dedicated to the backgrounds, endowing the paintings with a larger physical appearancewith larger foreheads. Unedited typology of objects, especially the soft and flat ones, detaches itself in order to better present glaring filiation.

Barbara Hepworth drew from the operating theatre block. It is in hospitals, where the reality of life manifests itself in its most concrete and abstract form. The instruments of a practitioner are fiddling with the flesh at the core of some harmonious cooperation. Fascinating synergy exists between the gesture and the instrument, brought by the restorative function of such labour. To transform rather than create. As legend says, it was an artist, who first probed The ‘hole’ in modernism.

Maude Maris claims allegiance to this chirurgical cleanliness. She slices the world in order to rearrange a new version of it on the canvas. Within these new paintings, with varying sizes she affirms that attraction towards the subject matter.To walk around the objects, to observe them from different perspectives, immortalizing within a sequence of several pauses. If the ideal is born out of balance and unity, through their mobility, the viewer must be capable of grabbing that constant vitality, not simply a profile or a face.

Pi Artworks Istanbul is proud to host Paris-based artist Maude Maris’ first solo exhibition in Turkey. The artist’s work had been exhibited this year at Ville de Thonon-les-Bains (solo) and VOG Fontaine (solo); and last year at Pi Artworks London, the gallery’s Contemporary Istanbul booth, and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes. 

Antique Romance consists of a considered and minimal selection of paintings and sculptures that showcase the two main sides of Maris’ practice. These new semi-abstract compositions combine in unusual ways references to objects and architecture from both ancient cultures and contemporary civilizations. Recurrent within the exhibition are references to the transformed remnants of ancient civilisations: The gigantic sculptures of Mount Nemrut, Turkey, the belongings of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, and the artefacts of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

Maris investigates the role -as protector- and spiritual meaning of ancient sculptures depicting animalistic figures, particularly large scale ones placed on and around buildings. Particular attention is given to how the form of these sculptures has changed over time. Her work references both historical sculptures such as those depicting Big Jerry, Big Horus and Big Io, alongside creatures of her own creation.

Maris’ works are described as the architecture of emotion. She builds emotions instead of physical constructions; she creates passages between the objects and figures, the past and today.

To capture the three-dimensionality of her subjects, she often creates sculptures to model her paintings on. In Antique Romance the sculptures are presented together with her paintings to form a broader installation.

Maude Maris: fragment, colour, mass
Saint-Ange residency, Seyssins, 2016
Translation: John Doherty

Maude Maris is a painter – absolutely – but she also uses other media to bring her painting into being. Whether through drawing, sculpture or photography, her approach involves the spatialisation of elements that have been recovered and transformed by a poetics that goes from landscape to architecture, both referential and mental. Here, she shares her experience as the first nominee of the Résidence Saint-Ange, and the impact this has had on her work.

You’d already been an artist in residence elsewhere. What was different about Saint-Ange?

To begin with, there’s the fact that I was on my own. The two artists who take up residencies there each year come along in turn for three months. Then there’s the fact that the work space and the living space are in the same building. This means that there’s a fusion of the thinking processes and the work itself. There’s also the fact that you’re outside the city [Grenoble], and that the studio, designed by Odile Decq, though it’s large, has little connection with its surroundings. The private part gives a magnificent view over the landscape, but the setting induces a sort of inner retreat. It’s a very specific kind of space, and it had an effect on the way I lived and worked there.

Did you have a particular project in mind, to begin with?

It wasn’t an obligation; but at the same time you don’t take on something like that without having an idea about what you want to do. Personally, I had a rough plan for a sculptural work, along with a few concepts that had begun to germinate…

You’d already been to see the place before the start of the residency. Did that in any sense shape, or reinforce, your orientation? Or did the constraints in question lead to the development of other projects?

It’s hard to say, because there may be influences that you’re not immediately aware of. For example, the fact that I arrived with a certain amount of material meant I could begin work right away. But I had to look around for the kinds of small objects I needed; and at the local Emmaüs charity shop I found a book that had an impact on the entire residency.

What sort of book was it?

It was called Vie et mort d’un pharaon, Toutankhamon [« Life and death of a Pharaoh, Tutankhamen »], published in the 1970s. It was of no great documentary interest, but it contained reproductions that fascinated me, in two ways: firstly, there were the interconnections of the spaces inside the tomb, giving views of the architectural schema; and then there were photographs of furniture with animal heads that suggested chess pieces, which themselves have an Egyptian genealogy. The book reawakened childhood memories of the kind we all have, about ancient Egypt and the origins of our culture.

Were there other contextual influences?

Well, I visited the Palais du Facteur Cheval [« Postman Cheval’s Ideal Palace »], which is just an hour away from Grenoble. There I found similar kinds of views incorporated into the architectural forms, along with echoes of ancient civilisations. And then, also during the residency, I went to Paris for two days to visit the newly-renovated Musée Rodin, where I bought two books, one of which featured Rodin’s collection of antiques. And it struck a chord. It resonated with my work on fragments of objects. I was taken by Rodin’s irreverent way of treating the pieces, and how he brought them into dialogue with his sculptures. He was a precursor in the way he duplicated mouldings, or « members », then assembled them as he pleased. What interested him in his fragmented antiques was the discovery of a certain abstraction. And this is also central to my own artistic research.

From fragmentation to abstraction in search of quintessence, in a sense?

When I mould an object I’ve collected, I change certain details, figurative indices and proportions. This constitutes a movement towards a sort of abstraction, so as to arrive at the essence of the object. It becomes open to interpretation by the viewer.

Did the different phases of the creative protocol change, over the course of the residency?

No, they didn’t, but certain events had unforeseen consequences, particularly in relation to the question of reflections. And as I was the first person to work in the studio, there were no signs of previous occupation. The only thing I particularly noticed was a sheet of glass. But I often use residues, or discarded things I just happen to come across, so I placed the mouldings on the glass to photograph them. They made up half of the resulting works, the other half being their reflections on the glass surface. This gave the compositions a certain frontality, with disconcerting symmetries.

Looking at the works you produced there, it also appears that the colours changed. They became deeper. How do you account for that?

It’s true that during the residency I particularly worked on the colours of the mouldings. This was a result of the numerous experiments I carried out in the studio. I hadn’t brought along all my materials, and while stocking up on pigments I came across a type of ink I wasn’t familiar with, which in fact diffused much better than the diluted acrylics I’d been using up to then. So I began colouring plaster by capillarity.

Then there are the forms, which seem more massive than before. And so colour and mass are two parameters that apparently took on greater importance during the residency.

Right from the start, I wanted to put on an exhibition with both weighty spaces and floating spaces. It materialised as Votive, at Vog, and included a painting entitled Voltes, which represented sculptures that were almost aerial, within a structure of geometrical abstraction. Then there was a set of paintings that highlighted the weight of objects. In the end, the point was to talk about sculpture in painting. Voltes, for example, is a diptych in which the two panels show the same structure, but from different angles. In other words, you move round it.

No sooner had you arrived than you got in contact with ESAD, the art school in Grenoble. What were you looking for there?

Given the resources that came with the residency, I felt it might be the time to do something I’d been thinking about for a while, which was to exhibit my small mouldings. And this led me to wonder about the idea of placing sculpture that was similar to painting side by side with it. Then I started transposing the mouldings onto another scale, so as to create autonomous sculptures that could cohabit with paintings. Executing these works was a complex process, and it was only natural that I should get in touch with ESAD, which had both the know-how and the equipment I needed. So I looked into the possibilities of putting together duplicated and/or coloured mouldings.

You talk quite a lot about « scale ». And it’s a parameter that’s essential to any lucid apprehension of your work. You oscillate between very large and very small formats. What’s going on here?

With paintings, I always think about the image in relation to a format. When I compose images in large formats, I think of a space in which people can walk around, with arrangements of objects. In the small formats, I see compositions as modified still lifes. But once the image has been projected – and I always use this mode of pictorial transfer – I may well choose a different scale. Everything’s defined by relationships to bodies and perceptions.

Architecture, landscapes, still lifes, etc., are your essential sources of inspiration. Which of them do you see as being the most important?

As regards painting, I’m impressed by the Italian primitives and their way of representing rocks, which is so open that it can suggest landscapes, or drapings. And talking about Italy, I’d just like to say that I admire the architect Aldo Rossi, and the photographs of his office taken by Luigi Ghirri, one of my favourites, who also produced magnificent images of Morandi’s studio. I find Morandi’s still lifes eloquent in their ambivalence. And it’s interesting to see filiations like this, which cut across time and genre.

How did you plan your exhibition at Vog?

It was a meeting of painting and sculpture. And that was the focus of the exhibition. It was also a synopsis of the residency: painting that expresses sculpture, and vice versa. What I wanted to do was to revisit a problematic of polychromatic sculpture, diffusing colour freely within mass. The legibility of the forms was distorted by the random way in which the pigments were dispersed through the plaster; which tended towards a sort of abstraction.

You talk about abstraction; but in fact there’s no real abstraction in your work, given that it’s always based on reality. So are you aiming at genuine abstraction, without any grounding in reality?

No. What interests me, actually, is the relation between work that draws on reality and a more synthetic vision; because I feel that this leaves the viewer free to interpret the subject. It’s an equilibrium between something that’s linked to reality and a door that’s open to perception. I want to create images that aren’t authoritarian.

Eric Suchère, Artothèque de Caen, 2012
Translation : Stéphanie Levet

Let us say once again, after a few others, that Maude Maris makes objects, that she moulds them, and then places the shapes she has cast into small boxes, models that are open on one side, that she then, under given lighting conditions, takes photographs of her compositions, and that it is finally from these photographs that she paints her paintings.

FIRST PROPOSITION

Maude Maris’s paintings thus undergo a process or, rather, the implementing of a setup which may recall Giorgio Morandi’s—with Morandi the setup consists in real objects covered in whitish paint and arranged on a small stand being year after year submitted to minor displacements—or Nicolas Poussin’s—Poussin staged figurines before starting on his compositions—, a setup which, as with Morandi, is not shown, but which is nevertheless underlying the painting, being its basis and not its end. We can suppose that, contrary to Morandi who checked after nature—even though it was a theatricalized nature—, Maude Maris conceives of her setup as a way of putting things at a distance: she is not painting an object, but the photograph of a positive she has obtained through casting. Her painting is thus the result of a series of filters whose aim is to abstract the object. The object is denaturalized not only through the casting process but also through photography, which flattens its reality, and then again through painting, as the colour given to the object in the painting has nothing to do with that of the initial object.

And the same goes for materials, which take on a hardness or softness, a brightness or dullness that bear no relation either to the original document. A pictorial arbitrary is being projected—as if through the use of mapping in 3D computer graphics software—onto a basis of interpreted reality.

SECOND PROPOSITION

What is at stake, then, is not only measuring what space there is between things or how one object is made to vibrate near another—which was what Morandi’s painting was essentially concerned with—, but also building a space that will seem plausible with these arbitrary objects in it. The box in which these artefacts are placed is a neutral place where tangible relationships between nevertheless abstract objects are established—abstract in the sense that they bear no resemblance to anything but themselves, and that they are only remotely connected with reality. How does one go from one mass to another, from a diagonal to a curve, from a piling-up to a scattering, from a hollow shape to a solid one, from a shadow to light, from a reflection to its absorption…? Maude Maris makes abstract objects visible to us, but the pictorial means she uses to show them to us are figurative. With her, painting is a way of making us believe in abstractions. She resorts to an anomal illusion—just as Yves Tanguy did in his paintings, although I do not think she claims him as an influence.

THIRD PROPOSITION

So the means Maude Maris uses tend towards likeliness thanks to imitation through light, relief, shadow, perspective… Maude Maris’s painting may evoke a language that is quite classic, yet it seems to be much closer to digital imagery—to those images commonly referred to as computer-generated images which today dominate representation, and will even more in the years to come, from our computer screens to the big cinema screen. But the type of computer-generated image that is being called to mind here is more archaic than that used by James Cameron in his movie “Avatar”. Maude Maris’s paintings seem to be made like digital images (3D modeling and mapping), but they show that they are artificial, they do not attempt to deceive us, they insist on their being artefacts, on our being faced with simulacra. The illusion is minimal. The point is to build a paradoxical abstraction.

FOURTH PROPOSITION

Abstracting, abstractions… We can suppose that such a setup is used to build an analogical space that it will be possible to connect to the real, but without it being nameable or assignable, or to represent a mental space—via the series of means deployed in the setup we go from a reality abstracted from the real to a reality seen in a mind’s eye. Or, put differently: we can see virtual objects in a plausible space and light without being able to say what it is we are seeing. Likewise, we do not know the scale of the objects and it is not necessarily inferable from the dimensions of the painting.

All we can say is that they are contained within a room—except for small size works which show objects that are simply placed on a floor whose depth is indicated by shaded tones. We are facing representations of a world that is familiar—the language that is used aims to make it seem so—which are yet entirely devoted to representing virtual realities that do not say much—except through those analogies already mentioned, which even so remain uncertain, as all analogies will—, representations which do not designate anything, which remain secret.

FIFTH PROPOSITION

Maude Maris’s painting is all the more secretive as the means implemented for its realization are remarkably discrete: no impastos, no gestural marks, no dripping… only what is necessary to a visible yet homogeneous brushwork, to a neat and meticulous execution that shuns virtuosity. Maude Maris’s painting is smooth on the surface and discretely expressive in its effects. The only effect that is emphasized is that of the objects’ reflections on the floor, an obvious evocation of a cliché of our times, the graphic interfaces of computers and Apple MP3 players—and as such, they are just as inexpressive stereotypes. Maude Maris’s painting is detached, egoless—and it is mostly in this respect that it reminds me of Ed Ruscha’s painting. It is devoid of any symbolical content, any expressivity, any reference to any kind of real… It is the representation of a scenography which is waiting for no actor, no human body and text, to come into being.

It is staging its own power to be in almost complete silence.

by Nanda Janssen

For her second exhibition at Isabelle Gounod Gallery, Maude Maris presents her new project “Foyer”. In this new works , painting, sculpture and architecture are even more closely aligned. Her ideas in this respect are definitely not restricted to the canvas but will extend here in a scenography staged specifically for the gallery space.

Maude Maris makes a name for herself with her tranquil paintings halfway between landscape and still life.

Small objects found on flea markets or on the street are cast in plaster. By doing so the artist can manipulate the object, give room to the unexpected by allowing little ‘accidents’ to happen, and preserve the texture. Children’s figurines, the arm of a doll or statuettes of the Holy Virgin or the head of a dog, anything can offer an interesting shape. Maris is interested in the transformation of the object. Formal analogies are key: if the head of a dog is turned ninety degrees, it suddenly seems a molar; if a figurine is decapitated, it resembles a landscape; a dolls arm corresponds to a branch; Virgin Mary’s pleated dress to a rock. Very recently, the artist also casts natural elements that she gathers from her direct surroundings like small branches or stones. To complete it, she sometimes uses rocks or fossils directly, without casting them. In the paintings all these objects come into play: casted natural and artificial objects and real, natural objects.

Each painting is the result of an elaborate process: collecting objects, casting them, create a composition, photograph it and finally paint the photograph. Each step adds a new layer of distance and flattens the objects. This detachment is enhanced by the painting technique. The brushstroke is discreet and the objects are translated into artificial pastel colours. However, the palette is changing: black and greys have recently made their entrance. On the whole, the use of three-dimensional software in her early work has left its mark on her current work. It has caused this artificiality and a smooth and plain aesthetics. Maris applies the stroke, the shadow much used in computer programmes to suggest depth, to pin down the object in the undefined space.

At first the objects were depicted in a neutral, white room hinting to both the museum space and the living room, and thus to the sculptural or utilitarian function of the depicted objects. The space has opened up now that these three walls have disappeared. The (faint) horizon is the only suggestion of space. As a result the depiction floats between a landscape and a still life.

Clearly sculpture is very present in Maris’ work. Not only in the working method (the casting of objects) but in her subject matter too: the focus on shape. As said before, in her paintings the objects hover to and fro an autonomous, sculptural position and utilitarian use. Since 2010 the painted shapes have stepped out of the canvas and have materialised in real space. The recent solo show ‘Nemeton’ in Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes (2015) for example presents an installation( paintings and sculpture). Like her paintings, sculptures are made with an economy of means. The works in ‘Nemeton’ and in ‘Foyer’, Maris’ current solo show here at Isabelle Gounod Gallery, explore both the early beginnings of architecture.

The source material that inspired this new body of work are drawings from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century that depict how nature lies at the basis of the Greek temples, for example tree-trunks became pillars by simply cutting off the branches; in the same vein abbot Laugier promoted in his ‘Essay on Architecture’ (1753) to renew architecture by returning to its origins, the publication contained an illustration of a primitive hut; and Mario Merz’s stone slab igloos underline the relation between architecture and sculpture. Maris mixes in her current work her interests in antiquity, prehistory, primitivism and even fantasy. Stones, rocks, branches, fossils and other shapes that are part of Maris’ vocabulary are stacked, piled and arranged in a simple and straightforward manner. The compositions evoke associations with Stonehenge, Greek temples, pyramids, primitive huts and fireplaces. Thus, with all these constructions Maude Maris shares with us the universal and primitive gesture of stacking.