We met in 1995 in New York and decided to work together in 1997. Our imaginary is principally nourished by the landscapes and the culture of the American southwest. From 2005 to 2012, we lived in Santa Fe (NM). In 2016, we went to live in Lamy (NM).

Our work, beyond an autobiographical dimension, explores and develops that which escapes the ordinary attention of the surrounding world and comes back to an intimate art history.

All that is imposed by sudden emergence, strangeness, dazzlement.

We begin with events and objects encountered during trips that develop our series: deserts, dead ends, the rarity of information, discrete units, minor changes, details, intervals, in-betweens constitute the universe of our work. Our point of view is peripheral, we are interested in the margins, the background, the depths.

Lamy, June 2017

À RIRE DANS LE NOIR, Théâtre des Terasses, Gordes  (FR), 1998

white neon - 2 3/4 x 24 x 2 in - 7 x 60,5 x 5 cm
Courtesy of the artists and Gandy gallery 

GRANDEUR NATURE, WINTER PALACE HOTEL, LUXOR, EGYPT, 1999

Blue neon in a circular translucent box
diameter of the box : 47 1/4 in - 120 cm - Ø: 6 mm
Courtesy of the artists and Gandy gallery

To celebrate the passage to the third millennium, we were invited to create a work in the gardens of the Winter Palace Hotel in Louqsor:
A bombax, a very large tree, one hundred and twenty years old, was located in the axis of the "Old Winter". We inscribed the words "Grandeur Nature" in blue neon, the letters being mounted on a transparent ring that surrounds the tree.
The expression Grandeur Nature, in the Egyptian context, refers to a double scale of excess, that of monuments and that of nature. It also evokes scale 1, that of real size, which introduces the body as an element of perception. The sentence opens up another dimension for the next millennium, which millennium will be ecological or not.

Am + A 2001

SERIES EGYPTIENNES, Prague, 2000-2001

THE EGYPTIAN SERIES

During our first stay in Luxor, we also became interested in the stars which decorate the ceilings of Egyptian tombs and temples.
Compared to the complex language of hieroglyphs, these painted skies seemed to us to arise from a more universal symbolism, one which was more immediately comprehensible.
As in our previous works Séries Américaines [The American Series], this ensemble entitled Séries Égyptiennes [The Egyptian Series] refers to what, in the exterior world, speaks to us of painting.
We became attached to the idea of representing what is already a representation of the celestial vault: fragments of skies which, by extending beyond their architectural limits, became veritable patches of the universe.
We tried to drift as freely as possible into the field of painting. The choices we made - using two colors only, defining the number and scale of the stars, determining the format of the supporting structure - are variables which seem to defy any precise rule.

Translated from the French by Jane Mc Donald

POWERAMA, Air de Paris, 2017

80 x 60 cm
Courtesy Gandy gallery