Galerie Maubert, Paris
Nicolas Daubanes
Galerie Maubert presents a solo show dedicated to Nicolas Daubanes, bringing together new sculptures and drawings that examine forms of architecture, constraint, and memory through materials and gestures charged with history.
At the center of the booth stands a full-scale reproduction of a 16th-century fountain basin from the Villa Medici. Created in 2026 from wooden doors taken from prison cells at Les Baumettes prison in Marseille, the work was produced with the participation of prisoners involved in a reintegration program (Ressourcerie de Montpellier). By reinterpreting this object—originally intended to provide water to the inhabitants of Rome—Daubanes brings into tension the legacy of aristocratic patronage with the contemporary realities of prison labor, allowing the basin to oscillate between a symbol of sharing and a more ambivalent metaphor of power.
Surrounding this central piece, several works explore architectures shaped by military history: drawings made with iron filings depicting bunkers in the calanques of Marseille—remnants of constrained spaces now absorbed by the landscape—as well as a fragment of the Rochambeau barracks that immerses the viewer in defensive architecture.
A series of War Paintings (2026), made from sugared concrete, evokes fragments of walls marked by bullet impacts while also referring to acts of sabotage carried out by resistance fighters who were forced to build the Atlantic Wall and secretly added sugar to the concrete in order to weaken the fortifications.
A photogram— a technique developed by the artist during his residency at the Villa Medici—depicts a statue from the port of Toulon that was damaged during the Allied bombings of 1944. Produced using steel sparks projected onto photosensitive paper, the image evokes both the flashes of war and a sky crossed by meteors.
In parallel, a group of objects referring to games played in prison were created for the fair from sawdust taken from prison doors, extending this reflection on resilience.
