Le loup de mer

By Ellen Turner Hall

The latest  art show at the Museum of Collioure is accompanied by a poster showing an empty throne dripping blue blood  with a crown and some  miscellaneous bones  in the foreground. With Le Loup,  we have just entered the magical bestiary of Matthieu Malvoisin.

The  intimate exhibition is  a playful look at the artist’s vision. In Homo homini lupus  a wolf is posed as a shepherd keeping watch over a  group of  alarmed-looking sheep.

A series  of drawings  of animal heads with  human bodies raises the  who’s/who question. Homme cerf  shows a deer displaying a magnificent set of bright yellow antlers while he stands with his hands casually in the pockets of his  hunter’s camouflage trousers.

Some of Malvoisin’s works  pay homage to the mountains with collages of sections of walking maps as in Territoire 1 where the route  is drawn in red while  three green figures run on air.  Le bipède lovingly depicts  in great detail the treads of a footless walking boot beside the outline of a bull’s skull.

Malvoisin’s  works suggest the complicated  relationship between urban and rural life, between human society and  the natural world on which we depend for sustenance, both physical and spiritual. And comical! While I was there a little girl laughed out loud to see La vache qui rit on two legs.

Loup de mer runs from 5 April to 18 May 2024.

For details: museecollioure.com