Anne Fontaine

Anne Fontaine uses the garden in its wild state as grounds for observation and sociological and graphic research. Working within a circumscribed area, she collects plants and classifies them as she would a herbarium. This methodical picking expresses and runs throughout her thought process and her examination of movements of human populations and the conditions in which we are able to live together as communities. She then uses drawing, photography, painting and wallpaper as mediums to convey the various stages of her research and findings. In the end, her pieces become graphic and poetic theorems of the living world. Anne Fontaine does not use this technique simply as an effective and clever way of presenting her observations. Instead, she uses a sensitive and intuitive language, poised between what is unknown to us and what we are able to refer to. Her creations are hypotheses that do not seek to convince but rather to question, to make us do with what we see. One is drawn to her work because of its beauty, its contained, precise and structured workmanship and, by extension, the various feelings and thoughts we experience mirror the outlines of her intricate and demanding work.

Marie Birot, 2020.

Translated by Lucy Pons | Biographical notes translated with the support of the Centre national des arts plastiques - Cnap.