Targz

Targz is a French pen-plotting artist who keeps his name to himself — it's pronounced "tar-gz" — and builds his machines the same way: his large-format plotter is his own construction, an OpenBuilds frame with a 3D-printed drawing head that goes up to A0. He makes beautiful artwork, and beautiful videos of the making of it — swooping pens dancing in gentle arcs across the page — and because I've watched how they're made, the finished works carry that same vibe for me. No art school, no engineering degree, no programming courses; "my passion for Lego, my taste for geometric shapes, and my career in creative programming have led me to generative art," he says, naming Vera Molnar and Bridget Riley as the direction-setters. The work is Op Art by machine — moiré interference, blended squares, vinyl-groove rhythms — in everything from Molotow acrylics to Ecoline watercolor and ballpoint. It was great to have him at Plotterfest 2024 in Peekskill, where a nudge from Nima Nabavi got him painting on canvas for the first time; he has shown from Comparaison at the Grand Palais in Paris to New York.

2 physical works