About Antoine Monmarche

Artistic approach
Night-time… shadows carouse with the remains of the dying light of the bedroom. A horde of sinister figures and other just-as-disquieting faces spring to life unexpectedly from a mishmash of clothes left in a ball, from the folds of a pillow... Who, as a child, never encountered these ever-so intense moments! But then, we grow up, childhood gets left behind as does, more often than not, the unbridled imagination that befriended it! A desire to recapture, renew with this imagination led me to take photos of faces… faces that were apparent in a myriad of aspects of nature – roots, tree trunks and stumps, driftwood, stones and rocks, crumbling old walls and so forth. These anthropomorphic shapes mean something to me when they go beyond the simple human-likeness and offer up their compelling expressions, when they provoke exquisitely extreme human feelings, emotions, when incidentally I rediscover my childhood fears. These dreamt-up characters are hardly ever “pleasant” to the eyes and mind of a child! Yet I was frequently disappointed with the rather approximate results of these photos, and so I began touching them up to highlight their force, their influence. The patterns of nature sparked of an idea … an essence, a framework, a backdrop! I started to exploit it, with the aim of incorporating a unique personal touch. Through these digital manipulations I learnt to master IT tools and I quickly felt the need to go further… So, I tried my hand at reversing the situation. As well as humanizing the substance, the material, the media, I would now “materialize” the human being… Substance and emotion, the themes that pervade my images! And, oh what a pleasure it is to mix material with immaterial... to pursue, to quest for and to obtain intensity beyond compare. Creation is part and parcel of my life. Indispensable, essential, vital. Photo-manipulation? Yes, it is... but I strive to make sure that none of my images suggest this or convey the work of a graphic artist. The technique used must be as low-key as possible. I have frequently been asked the source of my images: photos, paintings, sculptures? I prefer to remain ambiguous, obscure and pursue my route! But fittingly so, I intend to work with photography, painting and sculpture when the time is ripe and when I have the material resources that will offer me the opportunity to push the limits... even further.