Tursic & Mille Retrospective at Carré d'Art, Nîmes

The duo Ida Tursic and Wilfried Mille (both born 1974) present their first retrospective, 'Dissonances à géométries variables,' at Carré d'Art in Nîmes from April 25 to October 11, 2026. The exhibition traces their career from student days at the École nationale supérieure d'art de Dijon, featuring an early self-portrait rebus (auto-porc-trait) that sets their humorous, critical tone. They source images from press, internet, art history, and archives, then disrupt them with paint splatters and odd details. The show is organized thematically from 'happiness' to 'melancholy,' including a room of 1950s US tobacco and alcohol ads whose ideology they 'deactivate' through reproduction and ridicule. Unusual works include printing plates used as palettes and a table accumulating years of paint, which they call 'involuntary small paintings.' The artists work separately in their Mazamet studio (Tarn), exchanging canvases via a dumbwaiter, adding unexpected elements like a yellow rubber duck or a cat as emoji. Curator Hélène Audiffren compares their weed paintings to Flemish works. The exhibition highlights their punk, subversive figurative painting that critiques image saturation while pursuing strange beauty.