Opening on Wednesday 1st February, 7-9pm
Néoténie, 2023
“Reusing her old sculptures as material, Stéphanie Cherpin adapts to the fragmentation of our reality: she keeps and triturates small pieces, gives, recovers, collaborates, skinning, sometimes strips and roots; it is brutal, sometimes violent. Restoring, sewing, sewing up. It doesn’t matter if everything burns, the sacred is elsewhere. Tinged with a poetics of breakage and bifurcation, his works carry chaos within them. Like the artist, they take the road. With tenderness and ferocity, his sculpture becomes a barricade, a survival shelter. In this TAZ – temporary autonomous zone – a joyful riot is brewing. Assemblies that are both patched and elegant, rough and charming. For parts. Let it live! Stéphanie Cherpin shamanises objects crossed by the energy of improvisation. Like musical compositions, they are fragmented, hybrid and sometimes threatening realities. Depending on the context, the works change their appearance, they are stripped and mutate according to the situation. If a work is only a stammer, it contains all languages: they are recyclers, barbarians, shamans, vagabonds who push and push the limits, with whom one resists. Survivors.”
Marianne Derrien, text for the exhibition Corbeau-chien by Stéphanie Cherpin (from 11.11 to 31.12.22 at art-cade in Marseille).