Swiss photographers Matthieu Lavanchy and Jonas Marguet met while studying at the University of Art and Design Lausanne. In collaboration with others, Marguet founded the publishing house Aplustrois in 2008 as a side project. The publisher “considers the editorial object (book, booklet or other format) as an essential complement to any artistic event. The aim is not to document or comment on the event, but rather to push it further and explore new forms starting from it”.
     When Aplustrois was approached by a theater troupe that was working on a play that dealt with themes of the public perception of obesity and the concept of BBW — “big beautiful women” — Marguet and Lavanchy created a book of still-lifes about Western society’s complex relationship toward food, and “the tension between seduction and repulsion”.
     Grotesque towers of chocolate cake and a strangely melded pair of dining room chairs pull our associations with food and dining to their absurd extremes — and pseudo-scientific beakers and equipment seem to allude to our desire to measure out portions and study our food while simultaneously attempting to ignore the baseness of the instinct to eat. Curiously absent of human figures, Lavanchy and Marguet’s images manage to be funny, strange, and disturbing through their objects’ startling manipulation.

Neuf Veltes Remplissent un Quartaut is available for sale here. It is also on sale at Dashwood Books and Capricious Space in New York.