Camille
Blatrix

A former student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, from which he graduated in 2011, Camille Blatrix quickly turned to marquetry, following tutorials on YouTube and observing his father, a shipwright. He then developed his own technique, notably using sanding to create color transitions. Marquetry is a decorative art that adorns an object—usually a piece of furniture—with inlays of different types of wood to form patterns. Its roots date back to antiquity, and it was prized by many European courts—notably that of Louis XIV, whose cabinetmaker was André-Charles Boulle. 

Camille Blatrix uses this technique in sculpture, but he also employs it to create images with contemporary motifs, giving them an organic, living quality. This characteristic can be linked to the term he uses to describe his works—“emotional objects”—even though their creation requires long hours of craftsmanship, sometimes involving machining, and a high degree of technical mastery. Furthermore, their composition and themes are sometimes inspired by the dreams his children tell him about upon waking. Blatrix’s works thus straddle the tension between the distancing of impulse inherent in their mode of production and the emotional implications generated by their content.