Drawing is central to the work of the duo Lamarche-Ovize. Their sketchbooks are a compilation of references to comics, classical painting and botanical motifs bordering on the field of decorative arts. Their large landscapes cover the entire surface like a length of wallpaper. Their panoramas abound with lakes, forests and meadows where poppies, dragonflies and mushrooms appear alongside cacti, jellyfish and exotic plants. These artworks show the artists’ preoccupation with fauna and flora and their taste for 19th century scientific images and ornamentation. Through their use of assemblages and differences in scale, the conventional motifs take on a wild and luxuriant character. Then the line opens out into volume, in the form of ceramics, object-sculptures that invite viewers to explore a world as domestic as it is decadent.

Lamarche-Ovize aim to bring art into life by prioritising an artistic-artisanal approach and through the contemporary revival of the Arts and Crafts tradition of the 1860s. While full of scholarly references – to the philosopher Gaston Bachelard and the vegetarian geographer Elisée Reclus – the works of Lamarche-Ovize give pride of place to the so-called “minor” arts, to popular culture and even to kitsch and bad taste. In this way, the duo questions the distinction between the fine arts and applied arts and cultivates a playful dimension in all seriousness.

Alexandre and Florentine Lamarche-Ovize were born in 1980 and 1978 and have collaborated since 2006. They live and work in Bobigny near Paris.