Malo Chapuy

Malo Chapuy transforms ancient iconography to explore contemporary themes of speculative and post-apocalyptic fiction. He revisits the Gothic aesthetics, in a crossover with Brutalist architecture, in order to portray the image of a world in mutation, on the edge of sacralization and destruction. Blending medieval symbols and fragments of a reinvented history, his works offer a unique journey into a fictional past and an uncertain future threatened by ecological cataclysms. His enigmatic and poetic creations bring to life sacred objects lost in the meanders of an uncertain future.

Somewhere between pastiche and allegory, his paintings question the fragility of our civilization through scenes imbued with mysticism and contemporaneity that combine the technical rigor of the old masters with a critical eye on our times. His works are imbued with subtle anachronism: he transposes contemporary objects and ecological concerns into an iconographic framework of the past. His references range from Piero della Francesca, to Le Corbusier or even the photographic work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, to create compositions in which modern buildings, industrial wastelands, windmills and dilapidated water towers blend into biblical landscapes, reminiscent of Gothic settings. This dissonance in between ancient and modernist elements, evoke the shadow of an ecological catastrophe or a post-human future. Thus, we'll find a spaceship floating in the devastated sky, inspired by the Heavenly Jerusalem, and reminiscent of a modern ark, reserved for a chosen few, while scenes of adoration invite themselves into contemporary landscapes.

His compositions are fictitious relics, patinated and cracked, where every detail invites a double reading. Artifacts from an imaginary era come to life: modern truncheons become royal scepters adorned like ducal swords, medieval landscapes are populated by industrial ruins, and biblical scenes recall dystopias. Describing himself as a “forger of yesteryear”, Malo Chapuy makes his own frames, covers his backgrounds with gold leaf, and creates his colors from pigments such as lapis lazuli, used in their time by admired masters. These carefully orchestrated anachronisms question our relationship with the past and cast a critical eye on current ecological and social issues. By anchoring his work in a medieval aesthetic, he offers an enlightened rereading of art history and collective memory, while integrating contemporary motifs, that invite the viewer to contemplate time, reflect on the persistence of cultural symbols, and assess the vulnerability of our world in the face of current and upcoming crises.