Margaux Laurens-Neel’s work explodes, bursts and ejaculates. Precision and profusion combine to form an anthology of cats, vulvas, penises, flesh and faces painted, moulded, enamelled or photographed. We discover self-portraits in every corner of her practice, between pistils, putti, furs, or skeletons on a sunset background - when it is not in the heart of a metaphor of abortion. The artist sometimes ventures into the subtle criticism of socially accepted practices, such as the way in which lobsters are boiled alive in order to be better tasted. At the heart of her work emerge Caravaggio, the Discobolus or the flower paintings of the Dutch Golden Age - precise references rendered in a resolutely kitsch style and colours. Margaux Laurens-Neel’s bodies, sometimes close to the grotesque when they do not quote the masters, pay homage to women and men who are neither photoshopped nor sifted through the codes of pornography. The bulges, orange peel and crumpled skin reveal the traces that life has left on those who have enjoyed and suffered; the traces of those who have embodied the playlets of daily life under the eyes of cats who are often impassive. The artist thus speaks of sadness as well as delight - and she does so with humour. Margaux Laurens-Neel’s silhouettes are massive, heavy, anchored; like the baroque of a Rubens, they announce a change of era. After an elongated, anorexic humanity, lost under dehumanized representations, it is the time of a reincarnation, of a return to the tangible world, that is revealed here.
Charlotte Causson, Art Historian