In Maël Nozahic’s world, the apocalypse has already come and gone, and with it left a world in which everyday is a carnival of the grotesque. Nozahic’s large-scale oil paintings depict this world in a haunting, dream-like quality. Trees feature prominently, but never as a sign of life or knowledge, rather they are in a perpetual state of winter, always threatening death. A surrealist world, the paintings often refer to the cyclical, both visually and conceptually: a dog cone, birth, death, a halo, a carousal. However, the evolution in these scenes appears stumped, environmentally and emotionally retarded by trauma. There is no phoenix rising from the ashes, instead rabid dogs roam desolate streets, but the viewer is unsure if they are predators or prey. Speak about the apocalypse generally sheds light onto our contemporary fears within a future context, and in place of fear Nozahic presents fantasy, one that is not always sugarcoated, but surely bittersweet.

Leah Whitman-Salkin

 

Mael Nozahic takes apocalypse as an idyll. A place without fears, without emotion. No suffer, no fun. Just transformation. Her figurative anthropology turns into delicate psycho when her monstrous mutations melt together in brutal sympathy and postgenetic love. Nightmares are sweet dreams. And sweet dreams are nightmares. In her paintings the pure innocence of nature starts on a cruel level. From here it grows and raises up to fancy forms of poetry and horror, comic and beauty. Fine and shiny watercolours create a dark and absurd universe. But nothing here is pessimistic, rather opti-mystic. Enigmatic atmosphere enlights the scene and opens the arena for a chaotic circus between fairytale and future. 

Ingo Gerken