Quentin Dupuy

Born in 1992 and based in Marseille, Quentin Dupuy is a sculptor and visual artist whose practice is rooted in a rigorous and critical analysis of dominant narratives. A graduate of the Villa Arson (2016) and the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam (2018), he uses sculpture, installation, and objects to question the role of design and decorative arts in the production of our collective fictions. His work stands out for its determination to 'de-construct' aesthetic norms to reveal the mechanisms of power and visibility that underpin our everyday environment.

His recent publishing project, entitled Dessous, perfectly illustrates his taste for telescoping the strange and the ordinary. Through a series of collages, Quentin explores the theme of the cave as an originary space of fabulation about the sources of art and technique. With subtle humor, he invests this symbolic site with a reflection on the regimes of separation at work in the contemporary imaginary of labor. Between site-specific interventions and diverted objects, Quentin Dupuy shapes a body of work where the visual form becomes a tool of intellectual resistance, inviting a more complex and political reading of our material culture.

For his residency at Rocabella, Quentin Dupuy joins the 'Les Gardiennes de la Mer' (Guardians of the Sea) project with a proposal that questions the staging of maritime space. Drawing on his research into the cave and spaces of projection, he plans to transform certain coastal zones of the estate into 'critical vision' devices. For Quentin, the Guardians are not merely protective figures, but sentinels who manage visibility and access to the underwater imaginary.

The project involves creating site-specific installations and hybrid sculptures that borrow from the codes of decorative arts while evoking the roughness of maritime infrastructure. Playing on the idea of the 'sea cave' as a space of fabulation, he aims to design objects that question the production of our gaze upon the Mediterranean. His pieces, installed between the neoclassical villas and the crevices of the shore, will act as points of tension between the decorative and the functional. At Rocabella, Quentin Dupuy transforms the act of sculpting into an inquiry into how we construct our narratives about the sea, proposing an installation where humor and deconstruction open new perspectives on the protection of our liquid heritage.