Rose Mateus

Something’s happening.
We have entered a new era of freedom.
We don’t know what will happen next.

No longer just a bored or simply interested spectator, we have become author, actor, part of the performance. Giving into spontaneity, we allow ourselves surrealist dreams, ramblings and infringements.

We have digested the natural and outraged the virtual.

We create as part of a group, or as a solo initiative. We swap the “I, me” for the “I, us”. We throw the dice up in the air without knowing the result.

Our references jostle and pile up, thrusting us into tomorrow. We add a zest of dissidence and lots of irony, to dive headlong into a season that we want to be measured, joyful and impertinent.

Archaic Garden

So we cultivate an archaic garden where primitive joins forces with antique. Where archaeologists decipher hieroglyphics that speak of Gods, of man and plants unknown. Forbidden fruits and flowers bear forgotten names: Kumquat, oponce, papyrus, tuberose, rosewood. Nestled in shadowy niches, worn mosaics hide behind twisted and dried branches of ivy. Collapsed columns and arches form a mound of worn stones, hiding fossils.

Colors
The range is whitened, stony, mineral or delicately fruity. The softness of faded, evanescent, light and serious colors.

Underwater Variation

Ebbing and flowing with the tide, we swim “under-current”. Dive into abysses, explore the ocean depths. We discover marine flora and fauna, submerged cities, buried amphora and pots. A mysterious world, an aquatic and amniotic bubble. A stormy summer’s day, bright with magnetic lightening, the horizon plunging into the ocean.

Colors
The range delves into the blue, and extends to an aqua green. Sea anemone pink is enhanced by inky blues and purples. Navy and brown darken the landscape. White soap bubbles refresh the saturated atmosphere.

Tropical Dramaturgy

Wild nature plays all its cards, calling on Rousseau to lure us into a game of paradise lost with all its misleading tricks. Pretty green vines encircle us, exuberant flowers are giant to better devour us. The beaks of multicolored macaws pinch the cheeks of lost Janes.

Colors
The range is solar, incandescent, spicy and suffocating. Yellow singing at the top of its voice, uninhibited parrot green, the orange of Tibetan monks, the entire spectrum of reds from purple to salmon pink. Bushy brown, deep blue.

Enchanted Picnic

Folies in Versailles, rave party in Schönbrunn, Murder in an English garden. Jacques Tati on vacation in a golden carriage. Pretty DIY by Lewis Carroll, Fragonard gate-crashes the camp site. Hansel and Gretel sample molecular cuisine. Technical research and reasoned ecology show their impertinent sides. A festival of glamorous and fun materials. The dawn of artificial preciousness.

Colors
The range sets your teeth on edge. The neon colors are whitened. Jelly pink is transparent, the pastels are over-bright. The brights are on fire, tempered by a reasonable grey and a measured beige.

Shadowy Shores

A static place, metaphor of elsewhere. An undefined place between Cyrene and Cartagena, between Libya and Syria. Desert of sand, desert of sea, wreckers, pirates, warriors from another era. Alternation of ambiguous shade and dulled light. They illuminate, or dissimulate, the decks of ships run ashore, rusty anchors, ragged sails, driftwood, soft-shell crabs and tortoise shells.

Colors
The range is tinged with vegetal colors. Bathed in red, boat hull; dark navy, hut; strong green, canvas. Or lightened colors, bleached by the salt, faded by the sun and the sea.