Olivier Catte is a French artist born in Rouen, France, in 1957. He is known for his work with recycled cardboard, which he uses to create stimulating reflections on urban structures. Catte’s work is held in numerous private collections and he has exhibited in galleries in Paris, Brussels, Germany, Mexico, China, the USA and Japan.

His art is unique in that he doesn’t use collage techniques. Instead, he tears and inks cardboard, finding a degree of randomness in the material. Cardboard itself is significant, referring both to its practical use for transport and storage and to its ultimate fate as a symbol of the throwaway society.

One of the ironies of Catte’s work is that the material he uses to create images of urban life and its structures is the same material often used to shelter the homeless around the world. Catté’s urban landscapes are sometimes literal and representational, but they also reflect his inner resonance with the geometry of our way of life. Overall, Catté’s work is a unique and stimulating exploration of urban life and society. Her use of recycled cardboard as a medium highlights the issue of waste and sustainability, while her urban landscapes offer a reflection on the structures that define our urban existence.

Catte’s art captures the essence of urban life and the human experience in depersonalized metropolises. He sees fragility in the rigor of urban planning and accident in the orderly layout of cities. Using recycled cardboard, a symbol of consumption and industry, he creates abstract landscapes that reflect the mutations of architecture.

His unique technique is characterized by scratches, scrapes, cuts, lacerations and splashes of ink and paint, which he uses as tools to create living, ever-changing cities. He observes the interplay of light and shadow in the dense, labyrinthine urban fabric, and reaches up to offer the viewer a bird’s-eye view of the urban fabric.

Catte’s work also incorporates more evanescent elements, such as organic forms and elements of nature. At his Chinese residence in Zunyi in 2016, he returned to more organic forms, inspired by the Shanshui tradition of landscape painting. Mountains and forests compete for space on his canvas with industrial zones, and the grayish smog that obscures the polluted sky forms clouds and curls that cover the city and circulate within it like its sick breath.

Overall, Catte’s art is a reflection of the modern landscape and the human experience in the urban environment. Using recycled cardboard, he highlights the issue of waste and sustainability, while his urban landscapes offer a reflection on the structures that define our urban existence.

Through his art, Catte makes no moral judgments about the balance between nature and urbanization. Instead, he presents a modern landscape that is inscribed in the very matter of his works. He recounts the contemporary urban experience, where order and chaos, rigidity and fluidity, permanence and impermanence coexist.