Dewar & Gicquel's Monumental Sculptures at Centre Pompidou

Daniel Dewar (b. 1976, Forest of Dean, UK) and Grégory Gicquel (b. 1975, Saint-Brieuc) met at the École des Beaux-Arts de Rennes in 1997 and have worked together since 2004. Winners of the 2012 Prix Marcel Duchamp, the Franco-British duo is known for a distanced, humorous approach to sculpture rooted in craftsmanship. Their signature "ready-hand-made" method reworks popular aesthetics—dressing gowns, life-size cars, sinks, kitsch ornaments—into carefully crafted works, often carved in clay. For their exhibition at Espace 315 of the Centre Pompidou in Paris (September 25, 2013 – January 6, 2014), they renamed the space "le hall" and presented three monumental pieces. The first is a wooden oak sculpture of a bodybuilder, evoking comic book or animated film figures with an art deco aftertaste. The other two works are a giant tapestry featuring a dog, dressing gown, shoes, and lobster, and a large fresco titled "La Rivière Amstel," a glazed earthenware project for the Rokin metro station in Amsterdam. The artists never delegate labor, working as patient craftsmen in the vein of "refabrication" associated with Simon Starling, Steven Pippin, and Conrad Bakker. Their work balances seriousness and facetiousness, offering an ambiguous homage to the object without the Warholian transfiguration of the banal.