Memorabilia: Malo Chapuy | mor charpentier
The young French painter and craftsman Malo Chapuy uses a clever conceit in this exhibition at mor charpentier, a standout from what I saw in my trip to Paris this week. At first glance, his works look medieval. They’re small, on panels, executed with egg tempera, with frames that look hundreds of years old and lush craquelure perforating their surfaces.
In fact, they were painted this year, and contain subtle anachronisms. They’re a series of sly visual jokes. For example, in Annonciation au couvent de la Tourette (2024), pictured below, takes a classic annunciation composition, employed by da Vinci and co, and situates it next to the famous Le Corbusier building of the painting’s title.
Elsewhere, a van Eyck-style seated Madonna is framed by belching factory smokestacks, just the other side of the windows that surround her. A straight retread of Ucello’s famous battle scene features horsemen cutting down wind turbines. And a devotional triptych (with rusty hinges!) features a futuristic looking orb in the background. The show notes note that Chapuy makes (and ages) his frames, himself.
To be fair to the artist, what I read as clever visual jokes, could also be gestures of concern about the state of the world - its pollution, its climate change, its wars. Either way, they’re objects of beauty.
I loved a Chapuy work featuring in a separate exhibition at the gallery, downstairs, which focused on architectural scenes. La cité idéale (2022-2024) uses a well-worn Renaissance theme, of the ideal city, but updates it to a scene of 20th century apartment blocks, retreating to the sunbaked horizon, sentry-like.
The perspective is pure Piero; the atmosphere as silent and eerie as any di Chirico town square. I got up close and looked at the painstaking cracks in the paint, put there by the artist.
For some reason, I felt haunted by this scene. I didn’t see the joke. A couple of days later, passing by late at night, I stopped outside the gallery and craned my neck to look back at the ideal city once more.
Memorabilia: Malo Chapuy is at mor charpentier (Paris). 23rd November 2024 - 16th January 2025