Sans titre (Nanitos aux caisses)

Resin, metal and synthetic materials
210 x 60 x 80 cm

As a pumpkin-headed character wearing gardening gear and carrying a satchel on his back, this Nanitos seems to be very busy, swinging a stack of coloured plastic crates higher than himself on his arms. This half-human, half-plant creature comes straight from the imagination of artist Jean-François Fourtou and the fairy tales he used to tell his daughter when she was a child. In 2018, on his property in Marrakesh, which is a veritable open-air sculpture park, the artist decided to bring to life the tribe of “Nanitos”, who are born in the vegetable garden of the Moroccan house and become gardeners when they’ve grown up – thus living in peaceful autarky. An autobiographical origin that recurs in Fourtou’s work, inviting viewers to rediscover the enchantment as well as buried or forgotten sensations that he associates with childhood. The artist invites us to enter a universe which is both parallel and familiar: “The metamorphosis that the artist’s subjects undergo is deliberately limited in relation to reality’.^[1] The fantastic does not exclude the strange: the Nanitos, whose nature is “as marvellous as it is equivocal”^[2] are the closest representation to humans in his work, while remaining hybrid and enigmatic. 

^[1] Ardenne, Paul,  « Notre vrai monde est parallèle » in Le Monde de Jean-François Fourtou, Éditions Dilecta, Paris, 2023, p. 22

^[2] Ardenne, Paul,  « Notre vrai monde est parallèle » in Le Monde de Jean-François Fourtou, Éditions Dilecta, Paris, 2023, p. 23