Alex Chevalier
AC : The first time I was confronted with a work by Estèla Alliaud, it was a photograph from 2012, Sans titre (écart). The work I was confronted with was so unsettling that it opened up so many avenues of interpretation, but it's true that the first remark I made to myself was that this image spoke far more about sculpture than some sculptures do themselves. Very quickly, I began to mix things up, comparing the importance of photography in the work of Rodin and Brancusi with that of Robert Smithson, or the place given to drawings by Henri Moore... Sculpture is constructed through its representation, and is only as physical as we project it to be.
The artist's work is built around a vocabulary of minimal forms and aesthetics in which space plays a decisive role. In a practice that is often experimental, space becomes a decisive element in every gesture the artist makes. Space, whether photographed, sculpted or even painted, becomes immobile, as if frozen in time - an everyday time that Estèla Alliaud inhabits and transforms through meticulous gestures. The gesture, which is minimal, stems from long observation and study of the spaces to which the artist is invited - the change in color of the space according to the time of day, the supposed union of an entire studio into a single mass, the suggestion of a new horizon by superimposing a sheet of glass on a window... And yet, the gestures are almost imperceptible, sometimes even suggesting a certain withdrawal of the bodies.
From September 9 to October 29, Estèla Alliaud presents La mesure du doute, invited and curated by Perrine Lacroix, at La BF15 in Lyon. This solo exhibition follows a summer residency during which the artist used the exhibition space as her studio.
AC : To begin with, could we return to a number of key points in your practice, in particular the way you project space out of time by inhabiting it physically, but also, and above all, through your works?
EA : I see the places in which I work, and the movements that go through them, as raw material in which the relationship with time is essential.
L'écho is composed of three glass panels arranged at three points in the exhibition space. Part of each wall is sandblasted to reflect its own shadow. This was done during the installation of the exhibition L'Inconnue de la Seine - Un Songe [1], just as things were taking their place. Sandblasting acts on two levels: it underlines the shadow and doubles it. The main material in this work is time, but also space, as the panels, leaning precariously against the walls, cut up the space to give a different measure to those who cross it.
This sculpture contains within it the possibility of a shift: it is subject to the variations (light, volume) of the place in which it is shown.
I'm also thinking of Sans titre, a piece begun in 2014 that will probably never really come to an end, which consists of placing an element from the previous exhibition in each venue, as if to suspend the becoming of things in anticipation of the next gesture.
In both of these proposals, there's a desire to present time as something that can be stretched and malleable, because that's what it is: a human creation whose perception depends on many factors.
If I use photography, it's because this medium is characterized by its ability to show something that has been, that has been played out. It brings gestures and interventions into other spaces and temporalities. In this way, it "re-enacts" something that is no longer accessible[2]. At this point, photography operates a displacement: a shift in time and space that distances us from reality. What I'm trying to provoke is this distance, which transforms the gestures and volumes involved. It renders them abstract, empties them of their presence.
AC : Experimentation as a creative process?
EA : We were just talking about how photography allows me to "re-present" things, in the sense of bringing them into presence. It's precisely the need to experiment that led me to use photography, as a means of fixing the experimental nature of what happens in the studio.
The question of gesture is primordial for me. I focus on the positioning of things, how they come to rest in space (whatever the scale): support, distance.
AC : When we speak of sculpture, we're obviously referring to the notion of three-dimensionality, of multiple points of view. Conversely, photography generally offers a single point of view on a situation. In your practice, it's almost the opposite: the space is blocked, the volumes are against the walls and don't allow any projection on the part of the viewer, whereas in your photographs, the space is shown and the volumes are presented in their capacity as objects. Could you come back to this notion of point of view and space of projection?
EA : It's true that in my work there's this paradoxical relationship that destabilizes: my two-dimensional pieces speak of sculpture and, conversely, my sculptures speak of surface[3]. This creates confusion and questions the way in which the viewer enters into a physical relationship with the pieces.
I'm thinking, for example, of the sculpture I created at the Pavillon de Pantin[4], a cast that covered the entire floor surface of the exhibition room. There was a strong connection with the ductility of the material, and everyone wanted to enter the room, tread on the cast with their feet and touch it, but I chose to leave the spectator at the threshold of the space.
Whether through my sculptures or my photographs, what I'm looking for is to place the viewer on the edge of the elusive. There's something about restraint that puts things in tension.
AC : Earlier, you mentioned abstraction. Could we talk about it? Inspired by reality, by your notes and experiences of the spaces in which you work, each gesture you make seems to transform reality into abstraction. Like a kind of revelation, the space around us is abstract, simply a question of point of view.
EA : Our relationship with space is first and foremost a question of point of view, and the way we perceive it depends on a number of factors.
I'm thinking here of one of my pieces that contains everything you just mentioned: Les ombres calmes[5], which you mentioned in your introduction. The space in which I was working for this exhibition was, at that time of year, bathed in a muted light that shaped the space with its shadows. I took different shades from the walls at a given moment, then reproduced them in paint and applied them to the same walls: a life-size color chart in the shades of the place.
While this was a gesture of suspense, it also had the effect of disturbing the visitor's relationship with the site, freezing it in a form of abstraction.
AC : In each of your works, the (human) body is never represented, yet we feel its presence. Also, because of the importance you attach to gestures, each of your installations places us as witnesses to an evanescent body; something we also find with the colors you invoke in your work. Earlier, you spoke of the "elusive". Could you tell us more about this?
EA : First, there's the presence of my own body.
It's the amplitude of my gestures that gives my pieces their proportions. I start from simple observations: what is the distance between my two arms, and therefore what dimension can I apprehend?
My measurement is my first limit, and my pieces are directly linked to it, like Le ciel même, a sculpture composed of four glass cut-outs, each corresponding to a fragment of sky seen from the exhibition space's window. The outline of each of these fragments derives from a point of view: from my position in space, but also from the height of my gaze.
There's a kind of physicality in my process, not only in this story of proportion, but also in the relationship with my workshop gestures and the movements they impart to the material. In Les heures lentes, it's not just porcelain on plywood, but porcelain spread out: you can see the traces of the tool's passage, you can guess the gesture of stretching the material.
And then, in this story of the body, there's also the relationship to that of the spectator: his movement in space and his physical relationship to the sculptures: what empty space is drawn between the two, what movements induce my pieces in the exhibition space.
I'm thinking, for example, of L'écho, which we mentioned earlier, where the three glass panels that make up this sculpture unfold the space, punctuating the viewer's visit and creating a kind of double in his or her journey, an echo.
This intervention on the displacement of the viewer comes from the position of my sculptures and photographs, but also from their scale: the relationship induced between very large pieces and smaller ones. For me, it's essential to work on this distance from the visitor's gaze, but also on its height: not to remain on a single reading horizon.
Moreover, as you point out, the elusive nature of my work has several dimensions, and my relationship with color is one of them.
I use silent tints whose atonal quality exerts a disturbing effect on my photographs: they are color, but always on the verge of black and white.
The range of colors found in my pieces corresponds to the materials I use and their condition. For example, raw porcelain will be a very pale gray, while bisque porcelain will be closer to off-white.
I pay great attention to muted light and the quality of shadows when taking photographs or working on sculptures. The way we perceive shapes and colors comes from the way shadows and light land on bodies and objects. It's probably this meticulousness that gives my prints an appearance bordering on drawing or painting. There's also a very painterly dimension to my approach to sculpture.
AC : Could we focus on the exhibition you're preparing at La BF15, La mesure du doute? How was it conceived and apprehended?
EA : The first thing I take into account in my working process is the place as an entity with its own autonomy, its own singularities; it's my raw material. So it all began with the space at La BF15. I focus as much on the structure of the space itself as on details that are more resistant to the eye.
In this way, the piece Le repos came to me at a time when I was thinking about how to invest the space between the two larger rooms. I saw this space as a link between the two others, a hyphen whose volume is made modular by sliding walls that can close off the horizon as well as open it up. I placed these walls on the ground, in the very place they occupied. It's a simple gesture: a shift that freezes the space by cancelling out the walls' primary function (sliding).
AC : La mesure du doute, a site-specific project?
EA : In fact, I've already produced pieces occupying an entire space. I'm thinking, for example, of the piece Les ombres calmes we mentioned earlier, which involved repainting an entire exhibition space.
However, I envisaged my intervention at La BF15 more as an exhibition in which to deploy my writing.
In the same way that, in poetry, blanks are sometimes as important as words, or that in choreography, each gesture has its own existence, and it's in their interplay that they give shape to a whole. I wanted to make visible the tensions that exist between my sculptures and my photographs. So I envisaged my various pieces as resonating with the space, but also with each other.
AC : Also, I think it is important to remind that before the opening of this exhibition, you were in residence, on site, at La BF15 for over a month. In the context of this invitation, what role does this residency period play?
EA : I spent a little over a month at La BF15, so I inhabited this place in the literal sense of the term: with my presence and my work. Being constantly in the exhibition space allows for maintaining a tension in the work, a form of concentration. I slept on a mezzanine that is not immediately visible because it is a space within a space, nestled in a fold of the exhibition area. From this mezzanine, a small door opens onto the void, from which I could contemplate the exhibition space and see the work in progress from a different perspective: I felt as if I were outside of it while still being physically present. Sleeping in what could be called the lining of the exhibition space, its reverse side, immediately made sense to me. At bedtime, I felt the presence of my works, waiting, just below me. I found this proximity soothing, as if we shared the same rest and that rest inhabited me.
This time of waiting is fundamental in my practice; sometimes certain things wait for months on a shelf in the studio or in a corner before I really look at them and they find their place.
This is what I would define as the time necessary for observation.
Interview between Alex Chevalier and Estèla Alliaud, September 2016