Antoine Medes, Infatuation

finalist artist of the Emerige 2021 Revelations Grant, Œuvres dans la cour, commissioned by the festival

Graduated from the École Supérieure d’Arts & Médias of Caen – Cherbourg in 2016, Antoine Medes produces the pieces he deems necessary to show. Pervaded daily by a wide variety of images (memes, tropes, niche cultures…), he assimilates and intertwines the objects of his multiple passions, taking the hierarchies that distinguish them out of the equation. From the media he gets through, he makes use of everything to compose a non-verbal but expressible language, appealing to the empathy of others. His sculptures, drawings and installations therefore draw their strength from the confusion of unnamed feelings they implore, rather than the certainty of set and precise narratives set in the stone of their intentions. Antoine Medes is a finalist of the Emerige Revelations Grant 2021 presented at Toulon’s Hôtel des Arts as part of villa Noailles’ off-site exhibitions. In this regard, the arts centre commissioned him to create an artistic intervention for Design Parade. He exhibits a series of sculptures in the courtyard of the former Bishop’s Palace, interpreting the place as a romantic space, both warm and austere, an oxymoron, like the sluggish passion of a superficial love and the cheerful mourning of a liberating break-up. Heart, stool, and flower, just like pawns in the space of the courtyard, are given as modules inspired by a utilitarian tradition and guided by a decorative and sentimental intuition.