Théo Metais

Théo Metais is GlogauAIR resident from October 2025 to December 2025. Q4

Théo Metais is a French Berlin-based contemporary painter who explores themes of journey, impermanence and inner transformation. With a background in film journalism, his work blends cinematic storytelling and the expressive potential of painting, illustration and comic book. Hid work invites reflection on memory, movement, and the passage of time, all with a dash of humor.

Meet the Artist

Statement
GlogauAIR Project
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Statement

Théo Metais is a French Berlin-based contemporary painter whose work explores themes of journey, impermanence and inner transformation. Informed by a decade-long career as a film journalist, his visual language draws on the narrative power of cinema and the expressive potential of painting, illustration and comic book. Working primarily with a limited color palette, he employs charcoal, oil paint, ink and various printmaking techniques to reinterpret photograph into compositions that merge figuration and landscape. Through his refined use of blur and motion, his work invites quiet reflection on memory, movement, and the passage of time, all with a dash of humor.

GlogauAIR Project

I have always been drawn to the outcasts, the recluses and the forgotten. These characters and their faces have long inhabited my sketchbooks. While not tied to any specific social reality, they nonetheless capture something essential about our fragile condition as human beings and social entities.

This, to me, is also where cartooning, satire and the grotesque find their place. For years, I’ve been collecting images from cinema, comic books and medieval art where the individual seems to slip away, giving way to a more enigmatic presence.

My next project will dive into this archive of collected images to distill a series of drawings, monotypes and paintings.

All of it is infused with a touch of humor, mystery and nostalgia.

CV

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

October 2025 – Silencio, Backhaus Projects, Berlin (duo exhibition)
September 2025 – Kunst Salat, Studio4000, Berlin
September 2025 – Anemoia, Backhaus Projects, Berlin
November 2024 – Dwelling places, Art space in Exile, Berlin
September 2023 – Vagabund Brauerei Kesselhaus, Berlin

RESIDENCY

Oct – Dec 2025, Artist in residence, GlogauAIR, Berlin
GlogauAIR is a non-profit artist residency in Kreuzberg, Berlin, founded in 2006 by Spanish artist Chema Alvargonzalez. It offers curatorial support, technical assistance, and activities such as workshops, artist talks, and excursions. Residency participants can present work in Open Studios and, in some cases, a Project Space exhibition.
2024 – 2025, Artist in residence, Burnt Sienna Art School Berlin
Burnt Sienna Art School Berlin describes its residency/mentoring programme as a 3-month studio period focused on oil painting, with monthly painting tutorials. It also offers a small-group focused studio course for learning essential oil painting techniques.

LECTURES & WORKSHOPS