Stefan Rinck’s stone figures form a motley and comical community of, for the most part, animals, chimeras and monsters. They wear costumes and masks; are endowed with particular symbols or characteristics, some bear the names of heroes of Greek mythology or of legend. Rinck’s sculpted figures make up a discordant but related assembly of non-humans: they come from elsewhere, an archaic imaginary world, woven from myths and legends. With his collection of fauna, the artist is exploring a comical, imaginary yet realistic vein, breathing new life into its iconography, using a technique typical of the Middle Ages: sculpting his figures directly from stone.

Rinck’s sculptures remind us of the figures of Roman art, which populate the columns and tympana of churches. They share the same morphology and style, the hybrid aspect of the chimera and monster. These are grotesque figures, in which we recognize the vitalist comedy typical of medieval realism which could be observed during the parades of jesters and buffoons at religious and popular festivities. Yet if the Middle Ages seem to color Rinck’s art, its frame of reference in fact crystalizes around a number of “Gothic” obsessions of the Romantic kind: a taste for mythology and folk tales, for different epochs and cultures for the fantastic or figures of hubris and excess.

Stefan Rinck’s work has been subject to many exhibitions in Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Los Angeles, Madrid, Munich, Paris and features in the collections of the Frac Corse, Corte, (FR), the CBK Rotterdam (NL) and the Museum De Hallen, Haarlem (NL). In 2018, the work The mangust of Beauvais is installed permanently in the city of Paris at 53-57 rue de Grennelle (Beaupassage). In 2019, Stefan Rinck is part of the 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow published by Thames & Hudson.

Moffat Takadiwa creates large format sculptures from materials found on garbage dumps, notably computer parts, plastic bottle-caps, toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes. After gathering great quantities of these objects and sorting them by color and shape, the artist weaves these discarded scraps into rich wall hangings. Once suspended, these post-industrial fabrics, through their intricate beauty, acquire an aura of ritual or totemic artifacts.

Born in 1983, Moffat Takadiwa lives and works on the outskirts of Harare in Mbare, one of the largest recycling centers in the country and an important hub for the informal economy. Belonging to the post-independence generation, his work reflects his preoccupation with issues such as consumerism, inequality, post-colonialism and the environment. Since the earliest days of his artistic career, he has used his practice as a platform for the rehabilitation of his community, working with young local artists and designers, with a view to founding the world first artistic center based on the use of reclaimed materials.

The National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, staged a major solo exhibition of Moffat Takadiwa in 2023. In 2024, he had his first solo exhibition in a French institution at the Galerie Édouard Manet, Gennevilliers, and represents Zimbabwe at the 60^th Biennale di Venezia alongside five other artists. He exhibited his works in major institutions abroad as well, most notably at the Craft Contemporary (US), during the exhibition organized by Jeffrey Deitch and Gagosian at the Moore Building in Miami (US), at the ARoS Kunstmuseumat, Aarhus (DK), the MACAAL, Marrakesh (MA) and the Arnhem Museum (NL).

Xie Lei chose painting through personal conviction, as it opens up a pathway towards a language capable of expressing his sensory universe and a field of experimentation that allows him to delve into the specificity of this medium in the contemporary world. His work always starts with a basis in reality before taking flight to explore uncertain or ambiguous realms that are transformed by his imagination. Most of his paintings refer to murky or disturbing situations, discreetly linked to literary or cinematographic memories or drawn from a profound crucible of personal emotions. His work dwells on the complexity of events and situations and above all their ambiguity and the tensions they foster. His recent painting intrigues through its exploration of a world in-between sleep and death, torment and eroticism. The colors are somber but shift towards the luminous and the powerful. His touch is both fluid and more textured. Xie Lei’s painting is singular in that it offers up an alternative perception of time: in a salutary manner, it suggests a slowing of the spectator’s gaze and an escape from the intoxicating world of immediacy and constant acceleration. 

Xie Lei (b. 1983 in China) has lived and worked in Paris since 2006. He graduated from the CAFA in Beijing then the ENSBA in Paris. His works have been exhibited in numerous institutions: Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris (FR); MO.CO, Montpellier (FR); CAPC, Bordeaux (FR); Villa Noailles, Hyères (FR); Collection Lambert, Avignon (FR); MAC VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine (FR); Langen Foundation, Neuss (DE); Musée National d’Histoire d’Immigration, Paris (FR); Ricard Foundation, Paris (FR). His oeuvres feature in many collections such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, MAC VAL, Albertina Museum and X Museum. Xie Lei was resident at the Casa de Velázquez, Madrid (2020-2021) and at the Villa Medici, Roma (2024). He is nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize 2025.

Born in Versailles in 1980, Laurent Proux lives and works in Paris. In his painting and drawing, Laurent Proux produces powerful and original imagery that seeks through his formal choices to resolve the questions raised by his subjects. Described by some as a realist due to the subjects he depicts—industrial machinery, workstations, sexualized bodies, etc.­—his style finds its emancipation through his never-ending exploration of pictorial solutions, the integration of aberrations, bringing planes into collision, the use of artificial colors, all freeing his oeuvre from the opposition between figuration and abstraction. He approaches the human form through fragments, exaggeration and the use of silhouettes to create a kind of body-cum-machine, politicized and under assault, often disturbing and occasionally sentimental. His canvases take the form of a stage, in an altered perspective and the artist addresses the spectator with a visual and intellectual enigma running through the image.

Laurent Proux’s first institutionnal solo exhibition is taking place at the Musée de l’Abbaye in Saint-Claude (FR) in 2025. His oeuvres are included in the collections of the National Center for Visual Arts (CNAP), the Occitan, Limousin and Nouvelle-Aquitaine regional contemporary art collections (FRAC) and the Paris Municipal Collection (FMAC). His work has been exhibited at the Mana Contemporary in Chicago (US), the Shanghai Art Museum (CN), the Moscow Center for Contemporary Art (RU), the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon (FR), the Limousin FRAC in Limoges (FR), at the Lieu Commun in Toulouse (FR) and at the Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain de l'Abbaye Sainte-Croix aux Sables-d'Olonne (FR). Laurent Proux was a resident of the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid (ES).

Since the 1990s, Françoise Pétrovitch has produced one of the most powerful bodies of work on the French art scene. Amongst the numerous media she has explored—ceramics, glass, ink washes, painting, print and video—drawing retains pride of place. In constant dialog with the artists who have preceded her, she has been able to measure herself against the incontrovertible motifs of “high art”­­—Saint Sebastian, still lifes, etc. Pétrovitch’s art reveals an ambiguous world, willingly transgressive, playing with conventional boundaries and eluding any interpretation. Intimacy, fragments of life and disappearance, alongside the themes such as the double, transition and cruelty run through her work, which is inhabited by animals, flowers and beings, and whose atmosphere fluctuates between light and dark, rarely leaving the spectator unmoved.

She has enjoyed numerous solo exhibitions both in France and abroad, as in the Fonds Hélène et Édouard Leclerc in Landerneau and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, in 2022, and the Musée de la Vie romantique, Paris, in 2023. In 2018, she was the first contemporary artist to be awarded a solo exhibition at the Louvre-Lens. Over the past few years, Pétrovitch has produced monumental wall drawings and large format ensembles, for the Galerie des Enfants at the Centre Pompidou, the West Bund Museum, Shanghai, or for the Ballets du Nord Company. Her works are included in many private and public collections, most notably the Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR), the Voorlinden Museum, Wassenaar (NL), the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. (US), the Musée Jenisch, Vevey (CH), the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain of Saint-Etienne (FR) and of Strasbourg (FR), the MAC VAL (FR), the Salomon and Guerlain Foundations as well as Emerige Endowment Fund.