KATRE

Antonin Katre is a visual artist born in 1977 in Paris, where he currently lives. Creating work that makes abandoned places visible, he has left his mark on the street art scene through the originality of his approach, blending architecture and painting.
In 1993, Antonin Katre created his first graffiti piece and ten years later, he presented his first canvas mixing painting and photography: an aesthetic approach that has become his trademark. Based on a reflection on architecture and temporality, he began exploring abandoned places and spending most of his time there starting in the late 1990s. There he gathers traces, and captures and collects photographs that later serve as instruments for his artistic research.
Photography, silkscreen, wood, cardboard, glass, old blueprints, plexiglass, factory paper — the materials Antonin Katre works with are often salvaged from the sites themselves. After long periods of immersion in a given location, these gathered elements allow him to step back while remaining attuned to the spirit of the place. The work that emerges in the studio from this back-and-forth carries the imprint of that dialogue — distinctive pieces in which visual interventions on photography shift geometric reference points and reframe existing architectures.
At the heart of his practice is a sustained attention to forgotten and deserted spaces. His work asks us to look again at what has been abandoned — documenting these places, restoring them a kind of presence, and preserving something of their memory.

To create his artworks, Antonin Katre reproduces and reworks his black-and-white shots, drawing inspiration from these forgotten spaces to create strong dynamics that help give an impression of vitality to these otherwise decayed and empty places. Thus, in some series, one can find a brightly colored letter—often the letter K from his name—resembling explosive silhouettes of haste. The final, complex artwork is characterized by a dynamic and contrasting composition, with flashes of color blending into the rubble and metal bars of the photographed locations, which are very substantive themselves.
Today, Antonin Katre uses various mediums and volumes to create installations that mix photography, painting, neon tubes, straps, and rubble, offering an immersion into his universe—into these places that, for the most part, have already been destroyed.

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