Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes
20, quai Émile Zola
35000 Rennes

Exhibition presented as part of the Outsite programming

For her exhibition in the patio of the museum of fine art in Rennes at the joint invitation of 40mcube and the museum, Maude Maris puts into space this articulation between her paintings and her sculptures.

The works of Maude Maris constitute a universe in which sculptures and paintings nourish each other. The artist makes casts of objects of natural or common origin that she stages in the form of models, which she photographs and then reproduces in painting in a manner that is both realistic and dreamlike. Her sculptures, close to those represented in her paintings, are situated between abstraction and figuration of familiar forms.
Playing with mirror effects, mise en abyme and changes of scale, the whole of her work creates a space that immediately places us as the only human beings in these strange scenes populated by objects.

For her exhibition in the patio of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes at the joint invitation of 40mcube and the museum, Maude Maris puts into space this articulation between her paintings and her sculptures. The exhibition is made up of a series of six new paintings whose point of view induces the height of her hanging, opposite the installation Nemeton: a forest of columns, each cut in two in their height, separated by four small branches of plaster. The glass roof of the museum patio overlooking the exhibition led the artist to this idea of an architectural forest contained in a sort of immense veranda. The cut columns are inspired by a 17th century architectural perspective drawing by Andrea Pozzo, representing a column separated by four slats, as if it were stored. Here the cleats are replaced by an artefact of their origin: the branch. The column itself, polygonal, is covered with a plaster “bark”.

The ensemble of paintings and sculptures combines different piles, elementary gestures of construction common to the child, the architect and the sacred ritual (lego, temple, stele, dolmen, altar of offerings). They speak of our relationship to nature and the world, which we need to order in order to inhabit them materially and spiritually.
The smooth facture of the painting and the background with an indefinite horizon make the scenes possible at all scales, open up their evocative power and allow for moving interpretations.

The title of the exhibition and installation, Nemeton, which means both sacred forest and sanctuary in Gallic, recreates the ancient relationship between plant and mineral, which is particularly present in sculpture and architecture. The ritual dimension contained in this term is not without interest for Maude Maris, more in terms of atmosphere than explicit narration, her works always leaving a slight mystery, a certain ambiguity, hovering over the spaces represented.

Maude Maris is represented by the Isabelle Gounod gallery (Paris).