Nicolas Daubanes Links Landscape and Revolt at Galerie Maubert

Nicolas Daubanes, a Marseille-based artist, presents "Ce n’est pas joli de couper les arbres !" at Galerie Maubert in Paris from April 4 to May 11, 2019, ahead of a solo show at Palais de Tokyo in 2020. The exhibition title quotes graffiti from a 1987 prison mutiny at Saint-Maur, where inmates protested the removal of mental escape routes. Daubanes ties this to living matter: his work "Paysage en coupe" (2019) features eucalyptus seedlings under glass, engraved with a line about hope and protection, sourced from a Tasmanian island where English convicts were exploited. He plans to grow these into bonsai, referencing his late father's passion for the plants. The show explores constraint through materials like iron powder drawings (now fixed with incrustation, not magnets) and ceramics. "15 janvier 1972" (2018) references a Nancy prison revolt, using raw tiles with poetic quotes. "Ergonomie de la révolte" (2018) features bricks with fingerprints from workers at the Nagen brickworks. Daubanes draws on Goya and Jacques Callot, whose influence appears in drawings like "Strange fruit, after Goya" and "Strange fruit, after Jacques Callot" (both 2019). The exhibition juxtaposes personal and collective histories of rebellion.