Pauline Loctin
Pauline Loctin was born in a rural town in central France, where she watched her mother paint, draw and sculpt at home. “She doesn’t like when I say that, but she’s a beautiful artist,” says Loctin, whose main creative practice was music, before she was gifted a book on paper folding when she was in her 30s. She’s now based in Montréal, where she uses hand folding and origami techniques to create large-scale paper installations.
Pauline Loctin in her studio
As a paper artist and artistic director, Loctin’s practice moves skilfully between two spheres that few artists balance successfully: the art world and the world of retail design. In addition to exhibitions at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and during Art Basel Miami, Loctin has designed paper sculptures for clients such as Bentley, DeSerres, Holt Renfrew and Veuve Clicquot. Her installations transform the spaces of the atriums and windows of major shopping centres, and Loctin knows how to work the advantages of some of the most overlooked and publicly accessible exhibition spaces available.
Pauline Loctin, Coral, 2021. Paper, Plexiglass, 762 x 670 x 670 cm. PHOTO: BRUNO DESTOMBES, COURTESY OF PAULINE LOCTIN.
Since the 18th century, window displays have been sites of artistic expression that use handcrafted installations to market mass-produced goods — hand-painted one-of-a-kind set pieces consistently used to get customers through the front door, to sell the fantasy of uniform luxury goods. Loctin’s paper installations mirror this contradiction, by attracting viewers through the allure of the handmade, while maintaining geometric precision that almost appears machine-made.
Pauline Loctin, Pli.é Project, 2018. Paper, 91 x 91 x 30 cm. (folded) PHOTO: MELIKA DEZ, COURTESY OF PAULINE LOCTIN.
Loctin uses formal origami techniques — such as tessellation, the repetition of a hand-folded motif — alongside more freestyle sculpture techniques for creating curved folds. The resulting geometric forms are mechanically uniform with a rounded sculptural elegance that makes viewers question what paper can and can’t do.
This article is an excerpt.
Read the article in full in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of Studio Magazine.
