Born in 1991, Vincent Marcq is a French photographer who lives and works in Paris. After studying at the Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes, he joined the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d'Arles, from which he graduated in 2016. His work is presented at the Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles as part of the "special attention" given to three students. He was also noticed by the Agnès B. gallery, which exhibited his work in Paris, and won the Roederer Public Prize at the Planche(s) Contact Festival in Deauville. Selected for the 2020 Création en Cours program, he enters a six-month residency at Villa Medici before returning to France.
Poignant and sensitive, often tinged with humor, Vincent Marcq's photographs explore the special relationship between the individual and his habitat. They question the relationship between the construction of the self, the production of intimacy and the elaboration of urban space. A native of northern France, Vincent Marcq grew up in a small commune near Lille whose landscape was radically transformed by the massive construction of standardized housing. Deeply affected by this phenomenon, he questions its social repercussions. If we consider housing to be one of the main drivers of our personal development, what does this standardization of our environment imply? In his series, aptly titled Standard, he photographs the facades of houses whose model is directly inspired by that of the "gated communities" in the United States. These images of standardized housing, which resemble isolated models devoid of any trace of habitation, evoke the deconstruction of the social fabric and the loss of our individuality.
With his project "The Miracle of Älhmult", he continues this reflection by showing the ambivalence of our behavior towards this utopia of transforming the intimate home at low cost. He stages and photographs an imaginary city, a kind of "Ikea city" in which every house, every object, every inhabitant, becomes an instrument for promoting the brand. The result is a reflection on our real capacity to inhabit the world, and even to inhabit ourselves.
For his exhibition "No Man's Land" at Galerie Porte B., Vincent Marcq presents a set of photographs from three successive series. In the first series, entitled Outside, two lightboxes host whimsical visions of public spaces repurposed as private spaces. An empty swimming pool transformed into a dining room, a casino into a bedroom, disrupt our sense of intimacy through the photographer's lens. In Ville 2.0, models and high-rise buildings adorned with advertising messages seem to blend fiction and reality. Entitled "Life's Good", "No escap" or "Lovotel", these images seem to advocate the invasion of a dehumanized, concrete world. This could be the ironic response of the Happy Life photograph, in which a balloon garland hangs from a PVC window between two pieces of concrete wall.
All of which calls into question our ability to dream of another world.
