POSTCARDS TO PATRICK CAULFIELD | MAXIME ANSIAU

A bright and azure marine view paired with tins of tuna, this juxtaposition of contrasts encapsulates the essence of Maxime Ansiau’s work, a practice that is, above all, a process of exploration.
What at first glance (and especially as suggested by the title) appears to be a postcard is, in reality, a complex and refined collage composition, where time—its passage, the traces it leaves, and those the artist collects—plays a fundamental role.
The homage to Patrick Caulfield—his stylistic signature rooted in simplification and conventionality, the flat surface of the visual field with uniform chromatic backgrounds—is present only in form, the postcard, and in the choice of employing everyday, banal objects.
Yet simplification is precisely the opposite of what Ansiau offers us. The French Riviera he constructs seems to include all the canonical elements: a set table with fine dishes, exotic flowers, a view of a calm bay dotted with white sails as pristine as the tablecloth. However, the curiosity of an attentive eye reveals dissonant and incongruous details, such as an ordinary tin of tuna and an assortment of common olives and pickles, which, in a certain sense, clash with the silverware.
The selection of objects in the composition—whether food, interior elements, or other items—is designed to create a rupture in the potential narrative, where the apparent celebration of luxury and opulence slides into the grotesque.
What is good taste? Maxime Ansiau seems to ask us, not to illustrate an article in an elegant magazine, but rather to draw attention to the social and individual behaviors that shape and impact the environment we live in.
Mass production and unreflective consumption are some of the ‘issues’ or ‘problems’ we face, or of which we are complicit, actively or passively. Through the meticulousness of his recovery practice, Ansiau seeks to reposition a scale of values that is accessible and non-elitist, entrusting communication to a tool as simple as it is potentially rich in nuances: memory.
The souvenir and the postcard are part of a past imagination in which time—the time of waiting and longing—was experienced at an analogically slow pace. Ansiau invites us to practice slowness as a daily attitude, as if we are engaged in the patient creation of a collage.

Maxime Ansiau
A POSTCARD TO PATRICK CAULFIELD FROM THE FRENCH RIVIERA, 2022
From the series “Postcards to Patrick Caulfield”, ongoing
Photographic reconstruction, analog collage, 17.5 x 29 cm
Courtesy the artist

29/01/25