Nicolas Muller's 'Perpétuel' at Galerie Maubert explores constraint and deviation through drawing

Nicolas Muller's exhibition 'Perpétuel' at Galerie Maubert runs until May 23, 2026. The show centers on drawing as an experimental field, employing a strict protocol with basic tools: graphite, eraser, and paper. Each work emerges from a repeated process: paper alteration with bleach, line accumulation until pencil wear, and gradual erasure until the eraser is exhausted. Muller investigates what constraint systems produce in gesture, gaze, and the very possibility of creation. While his father was a prison guard, and the guardian figure subtly permeates the project, the focus extends beyond autobiography to systemic inquiry. The tension between repetition and disruption defines the exhibition, generating unpredictable variations within a rigid framework. Muller notes that a small, mundane eraser piece can disrupt a categorical formal development, introducing accident into a seemingly closed system. Formats are similar and titles absent—each drawing is 'Sans titre'—yet no two works resemble each other. Routine becomes a tool for producing differences, creating conditions for minimal yet visible divergences that crack the system's regularity. This logic echoes the evoked carceral universe, where everything is organized, standardized, and surveilled, yet forms of resistance persist. The exhibition argues not for radical originality but for the capacity to deviate from the norm, however slightly, claiming room to maneuver within constrained frameworks.