France
Statement
The first works of Maxime Thoreau take inspiration into the reality. Everything began by searching pictures on internet to make a kind of database. Then he takes some of these pictures, sketches or technical drawing to reproduce in sculpture a technical object. It means that some objects whose shape are just the result of their function. The interest is to find some object who are not designed by an aesthetic research like domestical object. By using a pre-existing shape Maxime Thoreau try to minimize his impact on his work, like an anonymous sculpture. Because of a very important work on the material, the artist almost became his own craftsman. Recently the origin of his sculptures is quite different. The duo « form/function » still there but the notion of fiction is added. Some old sculpture’s pictures are added into the database and some part of them are used to produce some new artworks. The technical object is not just replicated, sometime it’s kind of a fake, like an imitation. The artist also take inspiration in the cinema, especially in the science-fiction style. A kind of movie where the object are definitely designed to look like something logical and technical: a functional fiction or a fictional function?
Profile
GlogauAIR resident from July 2018 to September 2018
GlogauAIR Project
Form follow function is the formula formulated by the American architect Louis Sullivan. The form derives from the function. It summarizes the architect’s thought that the size of a building, its mass, its spatial grammar and all other characteristics of its appearance must derive solely from its function. “My sculptures follow this creed. The shapes I create all have an industrial or technical origin. They are silhouettes of objects, tools, whose form is solely linked to their function (engine part, technical building, dam, electric pylon). All of them are reproduced in scales and materials different from reality in order to produce a sculptural fiction of functional origin and formal end”.
The functionalist formula of Louis Sullivan originated at Vitruvius and his triptych utilitas (comfort), venustas (beauty) and firmitas (solidity). The project of residence is to adapt this formula in the form of three sculptures responding to these functionalist principles. The origin of these sculptures will be in Berlin architecture, especially in its industrial architecture. The first part of the residence will be allocated to an observation of my environment and to the search for this specific architecture. Then the collected images will be used as the basis of the sculpture work. I usually produce on a large scale. This will not be the case for this project, which I think requires a more reasonable dimension. I also want to play fully on this idea of triptych and to think about sculptures that could be hung on the wall and not laid on the floor as usual. The report to the reference image will then be more present.
CV Summary
STUDIES
- 2015 :Master with congratulation, ENSA Bourges
- 2013 : Licence with mention, ENSA Bourges
PRICE
- 2014: Winner of the biennal of young création, Houilles
Solo Show
- 2017: Programme court sans essorage, Le point G, Tulles
- 2016: -Formaliste, La Cabine, Clermont Ferrand
-Shape Shoop Shapen, collège Marcel Duchamp, Châteauroux - 2015: -Formes Emprei(U)ntées, art center La Graineterie, Houilles
- 2014: -Carte Blanche à Maxime Thoreau,musée archéologique, Etampes
GROUP SHOW
- 2017: -Jeune Création, Gallery Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin
- 2016: -La Mostra de Mende, Mende
- 2015 : -Artist in Aso 2015, centre d’art Fork School, Takamori, Japon
-Première, Fabrique Pola, Bordeaux - 2014 : -Price of young création, Atelier Blanc de Saint Remi
-Biennale de la jeune création, Centre d’art La Graineterie, Houilles - 2013
-Festival Diep 13, Front de mer de Dieppe
-Palèmétrébo #2, Palais Jacques Coeur, Bourges
-Salon Art 21ème, Etréchy - 2012 : -Avants travaux, persistance de l’espace, photographic meeting of Vendôme
- 2011 : -À Guichet fermé, the culture house, Bourges
Résidences
- 2017: – Lycée Caraminot, Egletons
- 2016: – AXENEO7, Gâtineau, Québec
– Collège Marcel Duchamp, Châteauroux - 2015: – Artists in Aso, Oguni Machi, Japon
– «Un artiste en ville», art center La Graineterie, Houilles
PRESS
- – Catalogue de l’exposition Première, texte of Laetitia Chauvin
- – Art Press n°423 Juin 2015, text of Julie Crenn
- – «Un natif numérique attaché au matériau de l’art contemporain», catalog of the exhibition Formes Emprei(u)ntées, texte of Donatella Bernardi
- – Catalog of young creation biennal, texte de Aurélie Barnier
- – Catalog of festival Diep 13, texte de Sarah Michel
