Wonderfully aluminium / purple Sun / excess.

When Anne Barrault offered me to exhibit artists of my own choosing in her gallery, I thought of a one-to-one situation, rather obvious concerning the space. I then imagined the meeting between Anne Bourse and Emilie Perrotto, as an implicit picture of my own practice. I associated them at once, because of the fundamental link that they both have with the production and the materiality of their works.

Anne Bourse works from cut out figures, collages, drawings, coloured backgrounds, printed images, silk drawings, and sometimes slightly “bust” objects she likes and trusts put together. I have in mind a precise chromatic scale: purple/ pink/ yellow/ blue/ pale green/ apple green/ black.

Each of her works has the obvious lightness peculiar to the chosen material. This materiality does tell us that what is essential in life is not in what is difficult or required.

I see in them a strategic mischievous criticism, in order to elude the chores of everyday life. Their spatial forms must not bother her. She often draws fake banknotes for her friends. Anne is able to make magic forms with hardly anything; she creates her own economy, by being able to change a piece of paper into a jewel.

Sunrise/Sunset/Where am I just now(1)

The installation reminds me of Japan rooms. I sat around the quilt cover I call the “twin-quilt”, adorned with cigarettes painted with silk ink. The cigarettes “dance the pattern”. On the black walls, she has lined up those soft, very sensual, faded coloured backgrounds.

Beside it, a bowing bunch of flowers, made of plastic bottles, flowers pinched from building halls and imaginary visiting cards. A petty Ikebana melancholy secretary, who should make ten appointments a day, caught up in the throes of an absurd competition.

Emilie Perotto makes sculptures on a large scale. Her shapes are built with costly material, such as stainless steel, black topan, cast aluminium. White and silvery light. I do like the excessiveness of her approach. With no concession or superfluity. Everything is excessively prepared, even locked. Being so rigorous in anticipating and spatializing a shape is rare. Emilie Perotto resorts to experts, and works regularly with a craftsman, sometimes with apprentices in iron, also with carpenters, who have made for her and with her the wished shape. When working, Emilie integrates their points of view as much as their technicalities. The sculptures are, in a way, the finalizing of working together. In this way, she elaborates her own economy, and her own production line.

Argumentativeness (capuchin sculpture) 1/2(2)

A bunch of black swords stuck into the silver tube-body of the King. A stately sculpture would be like the abstraction of The battle of San Romano painted by Uccello. Frontal perception. The black topan swords expect to be looked at, and threaten to knock you out. Through the pattern of the sculpture, you can imagine a mechanism of ruthless movements.

It is rare, as an artist, to be able to watch other artists working and stay in the background, while you witness the encounter of shapes and languages. I did not have to persuade Anne Bourse and Emilie Perotto to show their works together. I only wished the encounter would become apparent, without overdoing anything. The practices and the materiality of their works tell something political, each in its own way. These two female artists create their own autonomy.

Sarah Tritz, January 2015

Notes

1 Installation seen at Anne Bourse’s solo show, Sun rise/ Sunset/ Where am I just now, in September 2014, at Bikini art centre, Lyon.

2 Sculpture seen at the collective exhibition, Passages, Art Centre Les Capucins, Embrun.