MARIE MAILLARD takes over Julio Artist Run Space in Paris with a Pop Up presentation of her latest project LES ATHLÈTES. Through the prism of sport, the artist unveils a new design collection that is a conceptual performance — a fictional brand composed of pieces infused with the aesthetic codes of carefully chosen athletic disciplines.
With LES ATHLÈTES, Maillard redefines once again the boundaries of art and contemporary design. Here, sport is not simply a reference but becomes a cultural and aesthetic matrix, a field through which to interrogate and reinvent form.
Positioned at the intersection of visual art, architecture, and design, Maillard’s practice is marked by her ability to subvert digital technologies, exposing their poetic and aesthetic potential. The works she produces occupy an ambiguous space between object of desire and critical statement, appealing simultaneously to art collectors, design aficionados, and sports enthusiasts. Notably, part of the project was conceived and shaped in dialogue with artificial intelligence, extending her exploration of the porous limits between human imagination and technological invention.
The collection embraces multiplicity: thirteen sports disciplines are evoked, each with its own symbolic universe and visual vocabulary. At times the viewer is drawn into the vibrant, pop-inflected energy of the 1970s, with its acid-bright palette; elsewhere, the work shifts toward the sober, rectilinear, and solid lines of modernism. This oscillation creates a dynamic visual conversation, where histories of style collide and recombine under the sign of sport.
The project THE ATHLETES thus operates as a field of tension: between popular culture and artistic practice, between the materiality of furniture and conceptual abstraction, between the legacy of modern design and post-digital speculation.
A pioneer of digital arts in France, Marie Maillard is known for her video wallpapers, furnishing images, and immaterial wallpapers with ever-shifting motifs in constant renewal. She also invests in iconic art venues – the Louvre, the Petit Palais, and the Palazzo Grimani – by reproducing the decorative marble floor patterns of these spaces and animating them through augmented reality. In doing so, she creates a dialogue between inside and outside, breathing new life into these prestigious places: in situ, or outdoors through her numerous UNIT installations, accessible via her augmented reality app.
Julio Artist Run Space September 25 – 27, 2025 13 rue Juillet, 75020 Paris
julioartistrunspace.com
www.mariemaillard.com
