Inspired by artificial landscapes such as car parks, highways or civilian engineering, Martin Laforêt has developed a rigorous and intriguing aesthetic. His work is recognized by purified assembly, often elevating poor materials such as concrete and lumber.
His “Mould/Cast ” series, initiated in 2019, consists of a balanced assembly between
raw materials – concrete or bronze – which are composed alongside the wooden moulds that participated in their creation. The negative mould and its positive form then become one, as if united again, each the exact imprint of the other.
Looking beyond the incorporation of Mould and Cast in a single functional piece, Laforêt has since debuted new works which are explicitly referential to the infrastructural landscapes that form his visual language. The first result of this was the Palabre Chair (2021), a tall reclining chair made possible by the intersection and counterbalancing of two singular concrete slabs, which first debuted as part of the Vincenzo De Cotiis-curated show ‘Inside Le Purisme’ in Milan. Martin deepens this approach with his Highways series, the first of which is a monumental low table, a long and narrow mass, reaching almost 3 meters in length, is directly inspired by the topography of the Freeway.
Seeking yet for further freedom to work from his intuition, Martin’s latest collection of works, entitled Variations, comprises a series of chairs featuring a standardised central element in cast concrete. From this starting point Laforêt elaborates with a variety of casting techniques to create individual forms, bringing tangibly different life to each work. Aided by the imperfections of casting, this creates a series of works that are inherently unique. In line with the principles of the Arte Povera movement, Martin considers them as full-size models where the creative gesture is more important than the final object. Each chair redefines this experimental collection and reveals his path of creation.
