Born in the heart of the 1990s, Paul Garcin and Louise Mervelet were raised on the US series and reality television shows of the 2000s. The dramatic tone and kitsch aesthetic that characterises them have influenced the way in which the two artists tell their stories. This is where their practices meet: Louise’s work is deployed through sculpture and installation, while Paul’s work generally takes the form of performances. Both are involved, through programming or production, in experimental sound practices. Together, they create alternative worlds and speculative tales.

Paul and Louise belong to a generation who often choose to ignore or even play on the traditionally established hierarchy between academic and popular culture. Their worlds and references merge in collaboration: from the American activist and sculptor Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt cited by Louise to the pop icons Madonna or Katy Perry that appear in Paul’s performances. Despite the seeming light-heartedness of their joyful and relatable work, it is based on in-depth theoretical and contextual research. Amateurism is less a working method for them than an acknowledged and accepted aesthetic and a strategy of address.

Their respective practices are driven by a collective and consistently collaborative approach – the pair are used to working together or in a group. For Louise, this is a radical political commitment. As for Paul, his attraction to the collective is clear in the momentum found in fan communities, brought together through their sincere, intense and rather naïve love for a pop star. This innocence, this quintessentially teenage impulsiveness shows through in their artworks. Created out of expansive foam, a multitude of found objects, beads, glitter, and papier mâché, Louise’s sculptures contain a degree of urgency. They are hybrids that contaminate and react to one another. In a distinct formal register, but that borrows just as much from DIY, Paul makes the carpets on which he performs using a weaving method known as tufting.

During their residency at Lindre-Basse, Paul and Louise went for walks, discussing, sharing, investigating, and soaking up vernacular knowledge and regional history to give rise to a corpus of sculptures, installations, and performances. In this way, they subvert the codes of entertainment that could be described as “industrial” to evoke the post-industrial legacy of the Lorraine region, thus paying tribute with humour and affection to this territory, where Louise’s family comes from. The former workers’ town of Bataville, built in the 1930s on modernist principles similar to those of Bauhaus, is compared to the American suburbs, which are often the setting of films and series. The blast furnaces of Fensch Valley become castles that, as children, sparked their imagination. From these reappropriations and juxtapositions, the script of a queer fairy tale born in the mining towns and valleys of the Grand Est was formed.

Text by Clémentine Proby and translated by Anna Knight. 

The artist residency programme is organised by the CAC - la synagogue de Delme in collaboration with the Lorraine Regional Natural Park and the village of Lindre-Basse.