Nathalie Labretagne & Sylvain Gelinotte

Nathalie Labretagne was born in 1970, she lives and works in Sainte-Maxime (FR)
Sylvain Gelinotte was born in 1971, he lives and works between Bruxelles (BE) and Paris (FR)

Born from a collaborative working experience, the presented works revolve around a common denominator: the window blind. Each painting begins with the choice of this material. After successively exploring various genres, we decided to focus on a shared subject: the landscape, for both architectural reasons (the combination of horizontals and verticals) and poetic ones. The work begins in the field. It is about becoming aware of the landscape around us, whether urban or rural. Understanding the interactions between our environment and ourselves, how we act upon it and how it acts upon us. Before painting a landscape, time must be spent to grasp its function, its atmosphere, to understand its architectural construction. We immerse ourselves in it to analyze what we feel and approach it as an exercise, a method of training in the art of seeing the world as if for the first time. For us, it is about capturing the full substance of the world in order to depict it in a highly personal way. We would define this attitude as “sensorial topology.”