Parade

Guillaume Martial

2014 — Paris, France

About this series

PARADE questions our ownership of the city and the architecture. In a clever game with space, a character tries to find meaning in street furniture. 

The result is a new reading of the landscape: absurd, surreal and burlesque…

Working in the similar manner as a 19th century photographer on an archaeological expedition to photograph the ruins of ancient civilizations, Guillaume Martial has found strange architectural objects, wich suggest that they might have been built to honour a deity. He uses the pictorial convention of placing figures in the photographs to measure the size of the objects and test how they might have been used in the past. The photographs suggest that the objects might have been sites for human sacrifice to appease favour with a divine agency. If this is the case they might have been built to worship the deity known as Jacques Tati.
Paul Wombell, Curator and art director of France(s) Territoire Liquide photo festivals 

Photographer: Guillaume Martial
Nationality: French
Based in: Paris, France
Website: www.guillaumemartial.fr
Instagram: @guillaumemartial_

Guillaume Martial is a french artist, video maker and photographer who plays with reality to tell stories straight out of a magician’s hat. He often interprets a character that he met on stage while playing with his surroundings. After ten years of intensive figure skating during his childhood, he studied film and animation.
His work raises the question of how we occupy the space around us, with humour and self deprecation.
In 2013, he joined the collective project France(s) Territoire Liquide, published by Le Seuil and exhibited At the  BNF, the French national library. In 2015, he is prize-winner of the HSBC award and his monograph Slap-Stick is published by Actes Sud.
His work is regularly exhibited in galleries, festivals and international institutions. He pursues his personal researches during artist residencies, accepts private and public commissions and teaches as well.

Guillaume Martial was born in 1985 in Normandy, he lives and works in France.