Maïlys Lamotte-Paulet, visual artist working mainly in sculpture and installation, lives and works in Paris.
We discovered her work thanks to Julien de Casabianca (Laboratoire de la création) at the Felicita exhibition at the Beaux Arts de Paris where she won the Fondation de France Margherite and Method Keskar prize for sculpture.
We decided to accompany her for her first solo exhibition of contemporary art after her graduation from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris.
Her work tends to revolve around two allegorical vigils: museum guards and city watchmen. Both, despite belonging to different spheres, have this particularity, this common point of having one same function: to watch, to surveil, to lay in wait. The wait, which best characterises their posture, is directed towards a potential for action, constant vigilance.This wait encompasses all that could happen.
“Appels croisés” is an exhibition that revisits the idea of being on the lookout. Through several sculptures – installations categorised as heterotopias, defined as concrete spaces in which different stories and times are projected – the viewer is led to be vigilant, attentive to the smallest details that make up these spaces.
This exhibition project plays on the visitor’s perception – the alternation between what he perceives, what he sees or what he distinguishes. Nothing is blatantly laid out for the spectator to see. He must sometimes contort himself, refocus his attention and effort to apprehend and understand the elements that make up the ensemble of this exhibition. Each of these elements has a history that it borrows from a different social class and audiences, but which nevertheless stem from a universal field with shared references and imaginations. Throughout the exhibition, elements belonging to these two universes are hidden, concealed in the nooks and crannies of the sculptures and installations. Objects are recreated, ready-mades of sort, which play on transparency, in which what’s at stake is dissimulation, the erasure of these objects in the exhibition like in everyday life. We can no longer distinguish them and yet, as soon as we see them, they appear to be an integral part of the space that surrounds us.
The sculptures (the slabs) function, in this sense, as supports connecting different universes to find themselves in a space that is both communicative and unbiased.
Concealment, in the sense of hiding for others as much as can be done by appropriate means, is the anchor of the exhibition. The visitor himself becomes a watcher, his own supervisor, a guard of the pieces that surround him.
“Appels Croisés” is a football term that describes when two attackers cross their runs to call the ball in order to disorientate their opponent defence. “Appels croisés” can be understood here as the crossing between these two universes in order to blur the vision of the spectator, who, if he does not linger, loses control of the ball – here, of his eye – because everything is mixed, spread on one equal level.
Maïlys Lamotte-Paulet is still in the creation phase and is looking for a place to host her exhibition.
We will keep you informed as soon as this space is identified so that you can discover her work.
« The Fond Régnier pour la Création allowed me to create and design my first solo exhibition since graduating from the Beaux Arts in Paris. Thanks to the Fond Régnier pour la Création, I was able to launch this project which is close to my heart. The help I received allowed me to be free in my artistic creation and to consider an entire exhibition from beginning to end as I wished, devoting myself fully to it. » Maïlys Lamotte-Paulet
The Fonds Régnier pour la Création finances the production of the works by the artist, the work of the performers, the production costs of the works and the cost of the manufactured objects exhibited, the exhibition and communication costs.