Sebastien Preschoux | Marc Woehr “Curves and Corners”

From October 9th, we are showing works by Sebastien Preschaoux and Marc C. Woehr, in the exhibition “Curves and Corners”. The visual worlds of the two artists harmonize and contrast at the same time. Woehr and Preschoux, both work graphically abstract and use clear forms to create their picture compositions. On the one hand circles and curved shapes, on the other straight lines, diagonals and corners. The visual contrast between the image concepts continues in the layers, that lie below. While Marc C. Woehr also uses the computer and other machines to create his compositions, Sebastien Preschoux relies exclusively on manual work.
While we have already shown Marc C. Woehr works in the past. Sebastien Preschoux works can be seen for the first time in gallery. The exhibition will show works on canvas and paper, as well as reliefs made of wood and cardboard.

Sebastien Preschoux

Sébastien Preschoux is a French artist known for his geometric drawings. The lines and shapes that oscillate in his works appear as if they were generated by a computer. A key feature that sets his art apart from many contemporary aesthetic concepts is his insistence on handcraft. He is inspired by the values ​​of the Bauhaus movement, which manifest the fundamental importance of manual work.
When you watch Sébastien Preschoux at work, you feel the tension between the serenity in which he brings his lines onto the canvas without hurry and the beauty of an infinitely precise gesture. Inevitably the association with Kare-san-sui, the zen garden, arises. Without impatience, Sébastien Prechoux depicts the movement of the drawing in time and lets the material unfold in space.

In a natural and spontaneous relationship with the materials, the environment, the time and the work that is put into them, Sebastien Preschaoux shows in real time what is needed to create something that is now mostly left to machines. He emphasizes the value and the possibilities of the human body as perfect tools. The concentration of all senses lives in his works, the complete focus on one point. The mantra “man versus machine” lives in his pictures.
With his approach he deals with our contemporary culture, in which technology prevails and in many places displaces and replaces people.

Marc C. Woehr

Since he started as a graffiti artist in the 1980s, Marc C. Woehr has come a long way and developed an impressive artistic freedom. Like all street artists, he began with simple lettering, following on with large images several metres long. However, at some point he noticed that this hectic (because forbidden) work performed outdoors at night was no longer sufficient for him. He wanted to increase the element of composition in his work, and decided at short notice to move into a studio and to exchange the rough exterior walls for classical canvases. In the studio, his intensive preoccupation with urban space initially resulted in collages: compositions of photographs and newspaper cut-outs combined with painted elements. These collages too are reminiscent of the 1920s, evoking the Bauhaus and the DADA movement, and already hint at the aesthetics of wood relief.

Marc C. Woehr started his aesthetic production over twenty years ago on the street. Since then, the street as the smallest unit, architecture and the city as a large structure, as a matrix, have never left him. He has penetrated and examined them in all directions. The result is impressive: his wood reliefs have become his essential, characteristic theme. The preoccupation with the art of the early twentieth century has resulted in very contemporary works which in no way indicate that the artist started his career not with a brush or a crayon, but with a spray can in his hand.

9th of  October to 20th of November
Tuesday – Friday  2 – 7pm
and by appointment

Pretty Portal
Brunnenstrasse 12
40223 Düsseldorf
Dienstag – Freitag, 14-19h