Who is Marc-Antoine Petit ?
Presentation of the artist
Marc-Antoine Petit is a French artist living and working in Germany. He currently lives and works in Halle (Saale). Trained as a stonemason and qualified as a sculptor, the artist works with a wide range of materials, from stone to the installation of extravagant cardboard objects, paintings and architectures.
His artistic universe
Marc-Antoine’s artistic work is essentially inspired by Art Brut and old adventure comics. In this phantasmagorical universe, childhood nostalgia and Gothic architecture, ruined port cities and broken musical instruments mingle. It’s a poetic, dreamlike world in which the artist plays at living out his own adventures, wearing a costume in performances that look clownish, even Dadaist.
Drawing his inspiration from the philosophy of the alchemists, Marc-Antoine pursues his research aimlessly, with works produced in a highly intuitive way, offering himself and his audience the chance to discover unknown places. It’s a kind of initiatory journey in which young and old can lose themselves in contemplation and the extraordinary in a multitude of details.
“Connecting with your own soul and the soul of the world like a cry of urgency. Climb a ladder, go through a door, discover a place and then leave it. Escaping through a window and down a staircase, discovering another place and meeting the enigma. Facing danger and climbing to the pinnacle, rubbing shoulders with the carnal vaults criss-crossed with ogives, then stopping to contemplate, to fall into its heart and make the labyrinth of its lair”.
Marc-Antoine Petit.