Daniel Dewar & Gregory Gicquel

Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel have been collaborating since 1998, rooting their practice in both the figurative and the conceptual. They have taught themselves to work in stone carving, weaving and knitting, high-fired ceramics and wood working to produce sculpture in which material and subject matter are intricately related and reversible. The artworks presented at Wings, Petals, Toes combine ancient and modern technologies—where the mechanical, digital and manual encounter.

The exhibited benches are composed in a dual rhythm. The wooden structures, inhabited by snails, are meticulously carved with a now-obsolete copy carving machine—the mechanical antecedent of the 3D milling machine—and are finished by hand. At a different tempo, the cushions’ flowers and insects are digitally embroidered, wherein the fast-moving needle mimics the speed of insects fluttering.

Body parts emerge in Oak relief with feet, exploring an analogy between oiled wood and oiled skin, a sensual image that is later shifted to mutating feet with five, six or seven toes. Starting from a clay study the artists then carve from locally sourced wood, in doing so, they follow the steps of an academic process: from the model to the sculpture. By using clay, which they consider a “fast material”, Dewar and Gicquel emulate and tease the fragmentation, repetition and cloning effects of contemporary images.

In the living spaces of the Beverly Hills house, the sculptures take the form of furniture and are presented as domestic, ornamental follies. The concise presentation offers an entry point to a complex, joyful and lush Body of Work. The visitor is invited to sit, rest and contemplate. Wings, Petals, Toes is an homage to life and all forms of being and reproduction in today’s drifting technophile society.

Body of Work, a comprehensive monograph, was published in 2019 by Kiosk, Kunsthalle Basel, Portikus, and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, encompassing their practice since 2001.

Daniel Dewar (1976, Forest of Dean, UK; lives and works in Brussels)

Grégory Gicquel (1975, Saint-Brieuc, FR; lives and works in Plévenon)

Dewar & Gicquel have been working as an artist duo since 1998. Solo exhibitions of their work have been held at the Vienna Secession; Kunsthalle Basel; Portikus, Frankfurt; Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam; Kiosk, Ghent; Front Desk Apparatus, New York; Musée Rodin, Paris; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Palais de Tokyo, Paris and Clearing New York and Brussels.

Their work was featured in several group exhibitions, including Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Jalisco in 2021; the 2020 Geneva Biennial; 2019 Lyon Biennial; Wiels, Brussels; CAC, Vilnius; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; 2011 Yokohama Triennial; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; Raven Row, London; CAPC, Bordeaux; and Artists Space, New York.

Dewar & Gicquel won the Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2012. Their work is part of the collections of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Fonds cantonal d’art cWontemporain, Geneva; FRAC Ile-de-France; FRAC Aquitaine; FRAC Basse-Normandie; FRAC Pays De La Loire and FRAC Corse. Their work will be part of the exhibition Les Flammes at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris next month. In 2022 they will have a solo exhibition at Culturgest, Lisbon.