Onoko - Manon Duparc & François Pain French, b. 1991/1988

Born in France, the artistic duo Manon Duparc (b. 1991) & François Pain (b. 1988) met at the very beginning of their creative journeys. Both studied in Geneva between 2009 and 2015 - interior architecture and design for her, architecture for him. They quickly evolved into a shared artistic vision, leading them to focus exlusively on photographic images.

In 2017, they founded Think Utopia, an architectural photography atelier whose distinctive style and approach, navigating between geometric details and enigmatic atmospheres, quickly earned them commissions for prestigious museums such as the «Bourse de Commerce - Pinault collection» designed by Tadao Ando, the «Carmignac Foundation» museum and the «Albert Kahn photography museum» designed by Kengo Kuma.

In 2020, wishing to highlight their personal creations, Manon Duparc & François Pain gave birth to their shared creative voice under the name «Onoko». They immediately began to appear in Off Spaces and Project Rooms for group and solo exhibitions, in and around Geneva and at the Venice Biennale 2021.

For their main photographic series, "Percept," Manon and François capture fleeting moments that transcend the visible world.​ Seeking subtle, enigmatic atmospheres of light and color, their work bears witness to the formless soul of the void: a soul made of light, color, and sound. The subsequently unedited images, devoid of any figurative forms that would make their shots trivial, consist solely of intricate gradients of color but nevertheless reveal a profound sensitivity to the details of “light and form” or “forms of light,” to the atmosphere and its composition. This is a new approach to observing the poetry of light.