French artist and designer Laurent Minguet is a man of many talents. A street furniture designer by profession—and quite successful at that considering his designs adorn many a European city, including Paris’ La Defense and OECD Gardens and Lisbon’s Parque das Nações—Minguet is also a self-taught hyperrealist painter. His extraordinary talent for detailed brushwork, which he perfected as a teenager painting vintage car models on canvas, is showcased in his latest series, “Wood_City”, a collection of urban landscapes painted on untreated cherry wood, walnut or oak panels. Superimposed over the natural veining of the wooden substrate, the monochromatic urban vistas Minguet painstakingly paints in excruciating detail take on a sublime, otherworldly sensibility which is further enhanced by semi-transparent splashes of pure colour that boldly punctuate the hardboard canvases.
