CHIMERES, scuptures, installations, video, 2001

Not objects but light and shadows

Sophie Usunier works on concept contradictions.
Her works hold “contrast” original strength.
It is as they were offering us a glimpse of their very opposite.
Is it a hesitation? No, it is not.
It is just a way to ask and experiment questions.

The works included in this exhibit all represent a contrast between shape and shapeless.
Thus the audience might become part of it through routine or discovery.

Glass monsters become modern exorcists of the fear for the unknown.
Gargoyles’ belligerence together with carillons hypnotic strength become a new Chimera.
The glass harpy is dangling in the air.
Comparing the two we realize the latter seems heavier.
It is a strange creature that has anything to do with the audience’s idea of form and interaction.
Yet inexplicably its own abnormality is intimate and fragile.
We should hide and protect our fears instead of hiding brutalizing them.
I don’t know if this is due to our opinions or to our emotions.
Although I am sure the harpy is something pure, almost crystal clear.
Since it has nothing to hide - no “deviant thoughts” - it may emerge.
Since it has no stated containers, it is unable to contain too.
Its own substance makes it unreal.
This glass monster is the very immaterial element of its corporeity.

Paraffin hands have a specific, familiar shape.
Yet they turn into an apparition, becoming fascinating and beautiful ghosts.
They are inside a small studio, as they could be in a convent cell or inside a mine.
They are static, still aiming to perfectly understand what they will have to do.
Theirs is a prey, but while the mind is struggling the hands get distracted and play with their negative, their own shadow.
Their attention is absorbed in the only action related to their very form.
They outline an unreal space: Shadows on the wall.
Instead of reproducing their strength, they create their double, a game, a monster, a black shadow too; everything but their solidity.
Elements that the pure and elusive hands already hold.
They all can be used up and disappear the very moment they struggle to “brighten up”.
This is true creation, joyful and unforeseeable too.

The plasticine sphere is the most recognizable shape of all.
Yet it becomes a symbol of monstrosity.
Its own substance is impenetrable, and opaque, becoming mere surface.
It is an unforeseeable “being”, we do not know what to expect.
It looks like a solid and real body, but if we touch it we “break” it modifying it too.
It is inorganic but we fear it can spoil though.
It is like men looking for perfection.
Plasticine is hardly worked to turn it into a ball, it aims to perfection.
One can keep on turn it from one side to another, but the focus lens cannot focuses it.
It is both the very apotheosis and paradox of men’s actions from Plato to nowadays.
Men intervene to heal the gap between idea and substance, soul and body aiming to give a real shape to ideas and vice versa.

The sphere is controlled by movement itself.
There is a video of hand working a plasticine sphere, like an obsessive and unprovoked action.
It seems almost care-free, like a child’s action.
The confrontation moves between presence and image.
It finally creates a whirlpool, inducing a state of anxiety, and the silence resulting from overturned proportions too.
The small ball we could keep in our hands it is no longer under our control though.[...]
(Lorenzo Bruni, curator of the exhibition, galery Arte Note Contemporanea, Arezzo, 2001)