Galleries in Paris » Marcos Carrasquer

CARRASQUER – POLARIS

Galleries — Wed, 14 May 2025 13:30:06 +0000

Marcos Carrasquer’s new exhibition title could be a reference to border controls, reminding us of our powerlessness in the presence of authority. But here we’re talking about the artist Marcos Carrasquer, so if you ask him to open his suitcase, watch out, there’s going to be a lot coming out.

He’s known for his abundance of ideas. At each of his exhibitions, we anxiously await his way of seeing our world, of exposing human beings with all their weaknesses and faults. We also look forward to his caustic humor, his devastating poetry, his way of telling us about the reality of the world, of describing the phenomena that surround us from our humble position.

Combining the tragic and the grotesque, the scenes, which can be situated between nightmares and dreams, give the artist the opportunity to explore the theater of humanity in minute detail.

His often socially-critical works denounce many things, but also point the way to possible hope. Marcos Carrasquer uses painting to restore a bit of order to this confused society. And as he points out, none of his works can, unfortunately, transcend our everyday reality. His painting, then, is the conscience of our society.

We’ll forgive him for spying on us so joyfully, for dissecting us so maliciously, for making us his raw material, with derision, digesting and spitting out our failings with dexterity of brush and pen, and mastery of detail.At his fingertips, paint becomes a weapon of intelligence, opening our eyes. Not everything is pretty to look at, and this weapon can hurt, because we’re not in fiction painting, but what irony! So many truths! About human beings, about our history, our society, our culture. What a powerful freedom of expression! One of the best French painters today, who is gradually gaining international recognition thanks to the seriousness of his subjects, which he treats with extraordinary technique as a painter and draftsman.

CARRASQUER – POLARIS

Galleries — Sat, 24 Sep 2022 10:08:49 +0000

Y LO QUE ME FALTA ME LO IMAGINO / WHAT I MISS I IMAGINE / CE QUI ME MANQUE JE L’IMAGINE

What better title for an artist!  Everything that is missing from his universe, from his thoughts, Marcos Carrasquer imagines and will paint and draw it for us.
Marcos Carrasquer finds, through painting, a way to bring some order to this confused society. He then finds a way to « portrait » us with unfailing humour. And as he points out, none of his works can unfortunately go beyond our daily reality. His painting is then the conscience of our society. It is not the artist who is portrayed, but us in the world. Marcos Carrasquer’s work parsimoniously analyses the complexities of life. And we can forgive him for spying on us so happily, for dissecting us so maliciously, for making us his raw material. Marcos Carrasquer has this ease of analysis, of looking at our era with derision, and of digesting and spitting out our shortcomings with a dexterity of brush and pen and a mastery of detail. He then uses painting as a weapon of intelligence, he is the best interpreter of our anxieties, because he opens our eyes, and bares us in our time. Not everything is pleasant to look at, and this weapon can hurt, because we are not in fictional painting, but what irony! what illumination! what truths! on human beings, on our history, our society, our culture. What a powerful freedom of expression! A work that helps us not to forget, that helps us not to become ghosts too quickly, and finally, to understand what is an artist .

CARRASQUER – POLARIS

Galleries — Tue, 18 May 2021 09:49:33 +0000

MARCOS CARRASQUER
QUE LA FÊTE COMMENCE !

Marcos Carrasquer’s paintings possess a very paradoxical plastic seduction, an intense symbolic charge and an ambiguous vocation which is in the very nature of the language of his images.
Inspired by figures from our contemporary world, Marcos Carrasquer smears them, parodies and puts outrageous make-up on them in order to highlight the ridiculous, the factitious. His pictorial universe thus delimited, the artist refines his characters and their environment, pushes them into their entrenchment, affirming the grotesque of these situations. What could be more banal than a woman at home but in Life on Earth, the mermaid is naked, exhausted, on the edge of the abyss … while she still has faith in Chinese forecasts from fortune cookies, only the fish, at ease in his sheltered aquarium is unfazed.

The canvas is saturated with elements of all kinds and from different eras. Certain forces complement each other, other details emerge for the benefit of denouncing consumerism, political perversions, the Church, the crookedness of the powerful. If the tragic is always present in his works in the same way as a corrosive humor, Marcos Carrasquer tries to sow disorder and panic to suggest break-ups, sometimes reconciliations. Marcos does not seek to carry out a precise critique of a time in history nor of the awkward place occupied by the avant-garde in the collective consciousness of art historians. He discovers a revealing effect in the historical change of scenery, as for example in his triptych entitled Just Paint, where we find as the main character Malevich in flight attendant of a plane in distress, we attend the funeral of Malevich whose last wish – a cross-shaped coffin – doesn’t fit through the door and Jackson Pollock throwing his whiskey in Franco’s face in Nelson Rockefeller’s apartment. His precise and detailed figuration takes hold of the weight of derision, of laughter … His palette juxtaposes on the same surface scenes lived in different moments. The quality of the drawing, the pencil stroke, the composition serve a universe where the value systems and situations are never stable, where big events are reduced to small playful dramas.

Once again, the stimulation provoked by the paintings of Marcos Carrasquer gives rise to analogies, chains of events , movements of a dreamlike nature which are sufficient to delight the viewer.The titles – Life on Earth, Vous êtes ici / You

are here, The Annunciation – precede and follow the painting, giving it its obviousness and its impact force.
To our great delight, Marcos Carrasquer’s art is ruled by confusion, humor, terror, chance and euphoria. It engulfs morality and consensus and the viewer licks its chops.

Françoise Docquiert
This text was written for the Marcos Carrasquer exhibition
Que la fête commence !, at the Polaris gallery from May 6 to June 26, 2021.

CARRASQUER – MUDARIKI – POLARIS

Galleries — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 12:36:48 +0000

Polaris gallery is pleased to present from Saturday, June 6th the show « Artists United » which will feature new paintings and drawings by the artists Marcos Carrasquer (of Catalan origin) and Richard Mudariki (of Zimbabwean origin).
These two artists, one living in Paris, the other in South Africa, get together in their respective thrill of telling the world around them, our world, blending with dexterity, their personal view of society, human beings, their weaknesses, their confusion, all with razor-sharp humor and a self-mockery without fail.

THE REAL WORLD IS IN BLACK AND WHITE – POLARIS

Galleries — Fri, 17 May 2019 16:24:02 +0000

The title of this exhibition is an extract from an André Bazin critic on the movie “ Le Mystère Picasso” by Henri Georges Clouzot, in which he stresses that this movie filmed in color, is developed in the most part in black and white.

The spectator only recalls the parts kept in color in which Picasso is painting on a glass slab, he does not remember that the movie is mainly in black and white.

The exhibition The Real World is in black and white leads to the questioning of the notion of truth in color. A new found unity between night and day can be perceived.

The exhibition presents pieces from different artists working around black and around white, or using color in a way that unexpectedly, doesn’t give the spectator the immediate impression to be in front of color.

CARRASQUER – POLARIS

Galleries — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 12:53:17 +0000

Marcos Carrasquer

En mi hambre mando yo

French artist of Spanish origin, Marcos Carrasquer, was born in the Netherlands, of parents having fled the Francoism. Graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, he lives and works in Paris.

If a big part of Marcos Carrasquer’s works fascinates, , it is due to a strong originality, graphic as pictorial, but also to an overflowing imagination, on the strangest and most ironic representations of the contemporary History.

Marcos Carrasquer show us, not without a lot of humor our own incredulity in the face of our contemporary history. Here the artist neither is an archivist, nor documents the history. He seizes and accumulates, without any limit, references of the contemporary History and those of his family, but without ever falling in the satire, and imagine when the collective madness seizes the man, another more optimistic end is still possible.

If the stupidity of the man is underlined, the nonsense of the scenes, creative, and stimulating, also comes along with a world of animals (moles, rhinoceros, mouses, warms, monkeys…), having all a function and a role to play in the drawing or the painting, sending back like a mirror to the defects of the men with a very asserted irony.

And if it is difficult for us spectator to master in the first look, all this multitude of elements which are linked some with the others to create together other forms, we can recognize in this work an extraordinary imagination accompanied by a total and incredible control of the drawing.

The risk of the obsessional is always avoided, by a balance of the composition, up to the slightest detail, as the wallpaper that we guess behind a crowd of objects, themselves behind a crowd of characters, this interweaving of elements, this visual maelstrom can only delight our retina.
And it is through the numerous subjects approached and crossed by the artist, that the relevance of this work sends back to a certain jubilation of the spectator.

Galerie Polaris – Paris 3

Galleries — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 06:08:39 +0000

Created by Bernard Utudjian, Polaris Gallery is one of the first contemporary art gallery of this area of Le Marais, in Paris. The new space rue des Arquebusiers, ( incredible array of contemporary talent between this street and rue Saint-Claude) was inaugurated in 2009, (The development was confided to Odile Decq, architect of recent Museum of Contemporary Art in Roma ( Macro) . Polaris made the very first solo exhibitions of the main artists represented, and is always open to emerging and newest tendencies in art. The gallery represents : Etienne Armandon, Eric Aupol, Bart Baele, Yto Barrada, Monika Brandmeier, Matthias Bruggmann, Antonio Caballero, Marcos Carrasquer, John Casey, Odile Decq, Simon Faithfull, Vanessa Fanuele, Harald Fernagu, Patrick Guns, Anthony Hernandez, Louis Heilbronn, Khaled Jarrar, Richard Mudariki, Sara Ouhaddou, Nigel Rolfe, Gaétan Vaguelsy, Walter Van Beirendonck, Clémence Van Lunen, Simon Willems.