Atelier Bingo is Maxime Prou & Adèle Favreau, two illustrator/surface pattern & graphic designer from France. They love to experiment with screen printing and other graphic techniques to create colorful and abstract works.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. We are Maxime & Adèle, two illustrators, artists and graphic designers based in a rehabilitated factory in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre next to Nantes, France. “It’s in the countryside, a very peaceful place!” We love to experiment with paper, cutting, scanning, and doing screen-printing with them. We produce colorful and abstract work and try to give life to shapes. We do personal and commission works!
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? Just before Christmas we did a risography fanzine in collaboration with Tan & Loose Press in Chicago. It’s about a discussions between aliens, the name is “Wogoo Zoogi“. At the end of January, we had a collaboration with a Brooklyn Brand “Aelfie“; we did a pillow design. And for the moment we are cleaning our workplace for start of the new year 🙂 and we will be creating some new secret projects!
What is one of the bigger challenges you are struggling with these days and how do you see it developing? Maybe our exhibition in a young gallery in Brussels (Belgium) Suzanne Gallery. In fact, it was the first time for us , so we worked differently on screen prints, collages, paintings… and a collaboration with a textile designer, “Charlotte Simonis“. It was very great to try to understand each other for one big exhibition, it was a very exciting project! And we really want to keep an Art Part in our work and doing more gallery exhibition in your future. We start to work on canvas this year!
How has living in France affected your design practice? We live in the countryside because we wanted to have times for work, experiment and be bored with something! It is very important for us to think and progress. Times in countryside is very different in the city; it’s a bit “cliché” but we live more with the season and we are not too stressed!
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? We work a lot with paper. We cut it… after we can use it for a screen print or we scan it to create images on our computer. Personally, screenprinting plays with chance; we never know what the result will look like before the last colour is added.
What was the last show you saw that stuck out to you? Serge Poliakoff, in the Modern Art Museum of Paris — it was a year ago! This guy and his works was incredible! Composition, colors, size and all his gouache works are amazing!
What are you really excited about right now? To do collaborations with brands — it can be fashion design, design object, music covers… We love to share our universe with different people. Have a brief and thinking what can we do for them with Atelier Bingo!
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your work? The best and the worst reactions of people when they look our work, it’s when a mum tell us: ‘Oh it’s look like my children’s drawings.”
What artists or designers are you interested in right now? We are very interest by the works of Tal R, Linus Bill, Shirley Jaffe and the publishing houses like Lubok and Nobrow.
What is your beverage of choice when working in your studio? Coffee! Coffee and coffee! It’s very cold in winter in our studio so a hot drink always saves our life 🙂
What are you listening to right now? “The Cramps” – Like a Bad Girl Should
