Artist One - Matthieu Bourel

Matthieu Bourel is a French mixed media collage and digital artist born in the year 1976. He's known for combining traditional cut-and-paste collage techniques with digital editing and animation to manipulate photos to produce surrealistic and dream-like collages. An example of this is seen in his work "Woman under influence" Where you can see a man placing his hands on the woman's shoulder, there's a ring emanating from the man reflecting onto the woman, and there's copies of the woman's face moving forward in a loop. This is perhaps suggesting control and manipulation, the woman is always displaying a mask as she's heavily influenced by the man. The loop also suggests that the manipulation is continuous which has caused the woman to have so many masks. Additionally, the monotone effect evokes a gloomy and despairing feeling, perhaps reflecting the woman's point of view and how she perceives the world.

The photo manipulation may seem simple but the meaning behind the piece is full of complexity. Another example where Bourel produces a fantastic and surrealistic piece is "Duplicity" made in the year 2014. When you can see duplicate copies of the woman layering over each other. This can indicate that Matthieu Bourel was exploring the theme of identity where the woman is struggling to finding her true self. Moreover, the constant repetition of certain elements can sometimes be considered a commentary on social structures, human behaviour, and beliefs, revealing hidden intentions and unmasking mask after mask until only the truth, or at least a more honest view of reality, is revealed, usually with irony and tension.