Etienne Bouet and Mathieu Claudon came to art through skateboarding. While once marginal, skateboarding has bridged many other practices, transforming it into a culture in constant dialogue with photography, graphic design, painting, movement and of course architecture. Since they participated in this community from a young age, Etienne & Mathieu are shaped by this multidisciplinary approach to reading the urban landscape and rewriting it artistically. Through their images, the city appears as a stack of geometric blocks and quickly becomes a gigantic playground.

The duo formed by Etienne & Mathieu was born from their shared passion for skateboarding, which they explore as an object through photography and painting. Quickly, their work moves away from skateboarding to capture other subjects in order to question shapes, volumes, architecture and circulation in the urban landscape.

The large-scale framing of Mathieu Claudon’s photographs allows the skateboarders to be seen in their context. Etienne Bouet then intervenes over the printed photographs. With paint, he removes parts of the scene to better reveal perspective, strong lines and volumes. The colors and shapes he applies over the photographed image also enhance certain attributes. The paint partly erases the image, while also emphasizing certain aspects of it, ultimately giving birth to a new subject by staging our perspective.
Since 2016, Etienne & Mathieu regularly exhibit their work in France and the United States. Their series of painted photographs have been recognized both in the world of skateboarding and contemporary art.