Sandrine Pagny: Big Mammas, 2022
Sandrine Pagny torments porcelain. But the curves that she flatters, the contours that she caresses, display a polychrome satisfaction, with moods translated by an important work of color. This time, the artist rushes to an unprecedented scale, largely doubling his habits to end up with a dozen large capacities. These ornate bellies face us from all their faces, from all their buttocks. The opportunity to recall the eminently sensual jargon used to name the lip, the neck, the shoulder, the belly, the foot or the bottom of a pottery. Sandrine Pagny’s sculptures thus see their base turned then their volume mounted on a coil, before returning to the wheel to undergo final deformations and complete their plump silhouette. Pinches and gaps titillate the flesh, and if the surfaces are smooth, revenge manifests itself by provoking the established cannons. A claim asserts itself. Small mouths in clusters seem to want to catch their breath. It breathes. So the artist seeks to go further, to change the landscape, to other expanses. The amplitude of the greasy marbles motivate the gestation of fantastic panoramas. And among all, it is the volcanic reliefs that offer the most fertile soil. Those of Sandrine Pagny ooze abundance. Generating these new templates was acrobatic, involving new glazing processes, revised temperature curves, and above all ingenuity for charging, knowing that some pieces know up to six firings. You have to imagine these dripping Venuses in a makeshift enamel cabin, a Botticelli-esque plastic sandbox, and maneuvered by tinkering with a system combining a slide, a weight machine and a lifting pulley. Whether it’s the oven or the rest, it’s always about getting out of a cavity. In the light.
Text by Joel Riff, exhibition curator, Moly-Sabata / Albert Gleizes Foundation, January 2022
Sandrine Pagny: Big Mammas took place between February-March 2022 at Lefebvre & Fils Gallery, Paris
Photos © B. Fougeirol
