Playful, hallucinogenic, obsessive, and fantastic, the paintings of Marlene Moquet pose an enigma. Mocquet's is a world of animated objects and anthropomorphic animals: birds, volcanoes and beasts bleed into her raw surfaces. A rising art star, Mocquet's paintings sold out in one day at her most recent Paris gallery show. This is the first book on her work.

Mocquet's painting is striking for its singularity, spontaneity, and freedom. Drawing on art history - from Symbolism to Surrealism to Expressionism and action painting - as well as on more contemporary images from the world of manga and cartoons, her explosive painting, populated with animals, monsters, and anthropomorphic objects, leads viewers into a dreamlike and enigmatic universe.

Since her first solo exhibitions in 2007 at Freight + Volume in New York and Galerie Alain Gutharc in Paris, Mocquet has worked in a style of faux naivete. Like someone who appears to stumble but who always recovers her balance, Mocquet uses technical accidents as the mainspring for her bizarre and often grotesque narrative.

This volume, published in association with Mocquet's first museum exhibition, at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon, France, in spring 2009, presents more than 100 paintings by this newly celebrated artist.

Text in English and French.
This volume, published in association with Mocquet's first museum exhibition, at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon, France, in spring 2009, presents more than 100 paintings by this newly celebrated artist.

Photographs by: Blaise Adilon, Marc Domage