Sebastien Preschoux | Marc Woehr "Curves and Corners"

Marc C. Woehr began his artistic career in the 1980s as a graffiti artist—shaped by the street, its rules, and its visual language. With his transition to the studio, his engagement with the city shifted from murals to the picture plane: the graffiti artist’s gaze upon facades and lines of sight gave way to an analytical exploration of urban structure.An important milestone along this path is a group of works consisting of collages that echo the Bauhaus and Dada movements—early attempts not to depict the city, but to deconstruct and reorganize it. Already here, we see the principle that continues to underpin Woehr’s work to this day: the street as the smallest unit, and architecture and the city as a larger structure—as a matrix.Woehr’s key works today have moved far beyond collage. In their place are reliefs made of wood and cardboard, in which graffiti forms are reduced to diagonal lines and the colors are strictly separated from one another. Inspired by architecture, urban planning, and minimalism, streets, facades, and traffic arteries condense into geometric, multilayered relief structures—as if city maps were exploding into three dimensions. The city remains what it has always been for Woehr: the graffiti artist’s playground.Her titles offer a second, personal interpretation of the works: pure GPS coordinates, references to the specific locations that inspired their creation. To bring his work to life, Woehr translates his analog designs into digital cutting templates, from which the reliefs are created using a laser cutter—a process in which he deliberately allows for small imperfections and irregularities. Exactly how this transition from analog to digital is achieved in detail remains his secret.(Artist photo: Benjamin Tafel)

The French artist Sébastien Preschoux is known for his geometric drawings. His oscillating lines and forms appear as though generated by computer. The decisive feature of his art, however, is handwork: Preschoux insists on making every work himself, without machines.Handwork as a StancePreschoux is self-taught and lives and works in Paris. He is inspired by optical art and by the values of the Bauhaus, which emphasises the fundamental importance of manual work. Watching him at work reveals a tension between the calm with which he brings his lines onto the surface without haste and the precision of each individual gesture. Ruler and compass set the rhythm.Concentration as Method“One wrong line, and everything begins again.” This is how Preschoux describes his way of working. It demands great calm, concentration and focus. From this attitude come compositions that seem to float lightly in space. Anyone who watches him work inevitably thinks of the Japanese Zen garden, the karesansui. Here too, the effect arises from reduction, rhythm and patience. This association is an interpretation that we leave to the viewer.Wood, Ink and PatienceFor his paintings, Preschoux prepares the wooden support himself. He sands it several times and applies several layers of Chinese ink before drawing the outlines in acrylic. The result is a deep, absolute black against which the pattern and colours appear all the more luminous. The transition from one colour to the next is achieved by gradually adding a small proportion of the following colour. Only on close inspection does the trace of the human hand become visible. Preschoux calls this “the reward of the curious.”Threads in SpaceAlongside drawings and paintings, Preschoux creates installations of stretched threads. For Slinky, he created a mural in 2019 for Quai 36 in the Jardins de l’Arche in La Défense, in dialogue with a three-dimensional thread installation. In 2022 he took part in the group exhibition Adventices at La Manufacture in Aix-en-Provence. With the mantra “man against machine,” he criticises the dominance of technology in contemporary culture and highlights the value of the human body as a tool.Exhibitions with Pretty PortalIn 2020 Sébastien Preschoux was part of the group exhibition Curves and Corners alongside Marc C. Woehr.