Amaury Dubois’ Scrambled Car Photos Are Beautiful and Surreal
Take a trip to Cubism.
Ever looked at a great picture of a beautiful car and thought: Nah, too cohesive. Can I get that scrambled? Amaury Dubois has you covered. His photos look like wreckage pulled from some high-dollar vintage rally, disfigured Porsche 356s and Aston Martin DB2s and Ferrari 250s, reassembled by Georges Bracque. Everything is sliced, diced and arrayed in beautiful symphony, the sheetmetal equivalent of a classy cold-cuts platter from Whole Foods. Like those meat plates, Dubois’ collages reward extended engagement and satisfy with ungristled slabs of goodness. Why isn’t there a Cubist filter for Instagram? My duck-face selfies could use a taste of the abstract.
Dubois is better known as a painter of landscapes and flora, portrayed through a similar lens—imagine the ocean seen through this Waterford crystal vase. He turned to cars after being swept up in the beauty of the Rétromobile auto show in Paris. His automotive work follows that old anthropologist’s adage, “Make the strange familiar, the familiar strange.” Take Dubois’ interpretation of Porsche’s electro-whiz 918 Spyder. While the collage still bears the 918’s beautiful and aggressive shape, the magnification of several of the pieces allows a viewer to marvel at the thousands of precise pieces—wheels, lug nuts, aluminum pedals, titanium gas cap, hand-stitched interior—that make up the machine. It’s each of the car’s best angles, carved up and laid into a template of its silhouette. You need some art in your life; why not pick the stuff painted with the world’s most beautiful cars?
