They have long worked together. Both imprinted with a strong culture of contemporary drawing, exchange and discussion between them form true emulation. Last year, Frédéric Poincelet invited Antoine Marquis to show work at the gallery in the Des Fleurs pour Valentin group exhibition. This year, on the occasion of our participation in Paréidolie­—the international show of contemporary drawing in Marseille (postponed until 2021) – we suggested that they set up a dialogue between their drawings centred on questions of landscape and architecture.

            The drawings of Antoine Marquis are timeless and the fruit of very personal culture gained as an autodidact in contact with engravings by Fernand Khnopff and Gustave Doré, Philip Guston's painting, films by Eric Rohmer and Dario Argento and also, like Frédéric Poincelet, visits to underground bookshops in Paris at the end of the 1990s.

            Overall, his drawings vary between a classical world coming to an end, permeated by French museum culture, and a more popular world of the inner suburbs imbued with humour. Between life in a château and life at the foot of council blocks. Between elegant traditionalism and joyful resourcefulness. Made using graphite powder or pigments on canvas, his latest landscapes of cruel blocks of flats at night or manor houses/shacks incarnate these suspended worlds.

            Frédéric Poincelet uses a method of drawing that is justified only for him, that is not at the service of any artistic practice. He thus places himself in a tradition running from L'Assiette au Beurre to Bazooka, from The New Yorker to Elles sont de sorties and also uses his own cartoon drawing.

            Landscapes are highlighted in his drawings. They are urban areas, countryside or wilderness and provide a visit to a succession of places that are mysterious, abandoned or exploding. They are imaginary landscapes drawn with ultra-realistic care using a ballpoint pen only. A break in space, a strange detail or a mistake are disconcerting and the colours add to this unreal, psychedelic aspect.

            While Antoine Marquis works on this series of urban landscapes and desolate houses from the Paris suburbs to the queen's hamlet at Versailles, Frédéric Poincelet draws chateaux with no access and absurd architecture and huts in the woods. A dialogue is established.