Marc Le Rest: The Mad Hatter

Modern Eden Gallery presents ‘The Mad Hatter’, the US debut of French artist, Marc Le Rest. Le Rest’s oil paintings evolve like fashion collections, mixing the raw nature of the animal kingdom with culturally-rooted fabric hats and outfits. Le Rest takes his former background as a textile designer to the collections of Hermès, Armani, and Gaultier and incorporates his expertise into his fantastical “lace zoo” creations.

Born in the remote countryside of France, Marc Le Rest left his religious background to dedicate himself to art and the kingdom of lingerie in Paris. After leaving France for New York, Le Rest became an acclaimed designer and lived a colorful life of travel as an aspiring Bollywood star before returning to his fine art roots. As an artist, Marc Le Rest has illustrated three published books and continues to explicate his lace zoo series with his latest series, “The Mad Hatter”.

"THE MAD HATTER" exhibition is  developed simultaneously as a haute couture show and portrait exhibition, an artistic attempt to incorporate the artist’s  three passions for fashion design, animals and historical paintings. This show presents three mini-collections all bound together by inspiration from the whimsy and elegance of Alice in Wonderland. From prey animals wearing their predators to animals in protective helmets adorned in contrastingly delicate lace and pearls, Le Rest’s imagination and creativity knows no bounds.

“Marc Le Rest creates a surreal world of majestic animals covered in frills and lace. Le Rest’s colorful and imaginative oil paintings feature animals you would normally find at the zoo, like lions, giraffes and alligators, only instead of being locked in cages, they appear to be enclosed in colorful structures of soft fabric” -Nick Pizana, Hi-Fructose Magazine