Perle Melba

« Et les perles de son collier étaient belles comme des dents » 

Excerpt from the poem Coeur en bouche from Robert Desnos’s collection Langage cuit  

Like a bowl of ice cream dripping with pictorial evocations and childhood memories, at the living crossroads of the spacetime that coordinates all existence. 

This collection is built on the creation of a pictorial language of its own and an intimate, visceral wardrobe. One nourishing the other. And vice versa. 

An eagerness to liberate color, symbolized by jelly-like hues and bucolic greens. But also a (human) figure with childlike outlines and a fluid identity, shaggy or vibrant, whimsical or tactile, surreal and palpable. A youthful, heady face, sometimes reflected on an oversized bag or necklace. And in the choice of models with Pre-Raphaelite beauty, encircled by red hair and shining like an aura, or with others, haloed by short bleached hair and poetic androgyny. 

By accepting to let go and deliberately provoking a mise en abîme of the pictorial work, the act of immediacy of painting became intrinsically linked to the longer, more repetitive act of sewing, notably in a process of hand-made decorative gathers. The paintings that had become print were then digitally enlarged to their original scale after pleating the fabric, like a painter working from an enlarged photo. The resulting cut and material were then twisted onto the model’s own body. The painted motif was also translated into mohair knitwear, for its ability to produce excessive volume and retranscribe the subtle nuances and brushstrokes of the original paintings. Then the final pictorial intervention, a fresco centralized the various visual elements of the paintings. A painting to wear, embodied by too long or too short tubes skirts. 

And what else? Sweetness, kisses, softness, happy teeth and a cup of Perle Melba, please!