20 March – 12 May, 2018

142 rue Montmartre, 75002 Paris.

In association with The Cob Gallery & Drawing Now

British artist Nina Mae Fowler is know for her sumptuously detailed large-scale drawings created with sculptural counterparts, often set within ambitions installations. She treats her subject matter as a crucible of our own, taking on the role as both archivist and investigator to create startling new narratives through the lens of a bygone era. With her drawings, themes such as – fear, desire, grief, tragedy, intrusion, exploitation and violence – collide in a dynamic spectacle of decadence and decay.

Preoccupied with Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’, Fowler revels in the era’s sheer visual richness, at the same time as critiquing our culture’s obsession with stardom, as well as the ubiquitous presence of the photographic lens in the reception of imagery. Fowler’s use of labour-intensive manual draftsmanship is integral to working with the instantaneousness of cinematography and the immediacy of monochrome.

Fowler’s interpretations of the gods and goddesses of a bygone era call into question our contemporary appetite for celebrity, consequences of voyeurism, and the naive acceptance of the appearances of fame and glamour. There is an unsettling parallel between Fowler’s work and the current debate surrounding the abuse of power in the film industry and beyond. We can read elements of these installations as interrogations of institutional misogyny and in by confronting us with this, we are forced to question our own complicity in this endemic problem.

Photos: Jeremy Soudant and Benedicte Karyotis for Silencio