Branche n°8, 2018

Marianne Cresson  

Transposition and transversality are two terms which qualify Marianne Cresson's plastic research. Transposition first of all because it applies techniques from artistic crafts (seat upholstery) or ancestral know-how to the creation of contemporary sculptures. The codified and repetitive gesture of an artisanal profession pushes her to find ways to extricate herself from it. It then enters states conducive to wandering: it frees and builds the form out of all constraints. Transversality then because his works are charged with an aesthetic resulting from the upholstery, or functional objects (xare racket) in the service of a non-utilitarian form. By navigating between art and crafts, the artist enriches the facets of his work. Its leitmotiv is, moreover, not to forbid anything. If it sometimes has the impression of exploring multiple paths, in reality each production generates a new form or comes to nourish another. This research systematically involves doing it. The form is constructed through direct contact with the textile, an emotional vector. This is generated by an impulse born in thought, in a dream or by the encounter with a material which acts as a trigger. Figuration-profusion and abstraction-lightness constitute the two approaches of his creations. The first is linked to the history of the seat: each era generates a unique design that evokes characters that it transposes into sculpture. These include the Busts and Tronches series which take up all the attributes (trimmings, ornamental nails, vegetable hair, etc.) and seat manufacturing techniques. The accumulation and richness of the fabrics make these objects strong pieces with an almost human presence. The second stems from a deep desire to achieve an economy of means. If the artist has long been part of a logic of valuing materials intended for scrap, logic applied to all her series, she also wanted to achieve aesthetic purification. This is what she deploys in the Branche series inspired by the xare racquet (Basque ball game): a woven textile antler. Also the whole of the sculptor's plastic practice is a language composed of different lexical fields that she mobilizes according to the emotion she wishes to generate. Color holds a preponderant place in the artist's work. It is she who will make the room vibrate. The visual artist considers it as an emotional language intimately linked to that of the fabric. Both bring warmth and humanity to the piece produced. There again it is doing it, a form of instinct of the hand, which will guide towards the good colored chords. Marianne Cresson finds her bearings with artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Annette Messager or even Joana Vasconcelos.