Pierre-Etienne Morelle – Shields
L’artista presenta la sua recente ricerca sul processo di stampa. Punto di partenza di un processo che lo ha portato a estendere la sua ricerca a medium ausiliari della pittura, mostrandoci vari elementi sottoposti allo stress dalle forze.
Comunicato stampa
In his third show at Loom Gallery, Pierre-Etienne Morelle presents his recent research on the printing process. Starting from a fundamental observation - the lack of space in his studio - he began to produce prints. As he usually does, he questions the medium’s production process and goes in the opposite direction of what printing techniques are usually made for: copies.
With the works Crack the artist is using glass (a material that he likes for the random lines that it can generate when it breaks) in order to question the concept of authenticity. Here, he breaks the mold as he presses it during the printing process. The result expresses the manifestation of tremendous pressure, creating a unique piece each time.
In the first room the site specific installation Half visible revolution is pending for activation. This work is also characterised by the desire for randomness. It consists of a large composition of plywood panels spread across the walls of the gallery space and connected at one point to the opposite wall with rubber straps. The bands are stretched, coated with pigment, and will be released - as orchestras of arbitrariness. The impacts on panels create drawings that are surprisingly complex compared to what the eye can capture in such a flash action.
The starting point of the printing process leads PEM to extend his research into the medium of painting. Exploring the quality of light and shadow, experimenting with lines and composition through his own vocabulary, he presents a group of works from the two past years in the main room of the gallery. Etoile d’araignée, are further evidence of the beauty found in unexpected phenomena that we cannot control. The shards have been carefully collected, reassembled and laser-glued. The broken glass becomes the support for a drawing created in the shadow of the cracks.
This consideration towards shadow leads Morelle to start a new series of works : Shield explore the quality of shadow and light in paintings and are related to some of his earlier work where the support itself was shaped by the contraction of its surface. This is a recurring exercise in his work as he seeks to disrupt the stability of a square. With the series Shield, the bas-reliefs are made possible by pressure applied horizontally and vertically to the sides of the panel toward its center. This deforms the originally flat surface of a square into a pyramidal shape. In Shields, Morelle express his interest for materiality while he shows us various elements put under the stress of forces and freezed in tension.
Pierre-Etienne Morelle is a french-born artist who lives in Berlin since 2009. Through his installations, sculptures and performances, he explores the solidity of raw material and its predictable break. By showing objects that can not be maintained or finished, Pierre-Etienne Morelle enlightens the process of creating art. His work aims to explore the notion of space by using materials, architecture and bodies. Everything about the contour (the envelope of the work) is put in tension to question our relationship to the exhibition visit. The resulting works have as a common denominator an obsession with line, gesture and random trajectory.
