LAURENCE LE CONSTANT
The work of Laurence Le Constant sketches out the contours of a bewitching world, populated by singular hybrid figures. Childhood fantasies are revived, lulled by cosmic legends and tales from which she borrows many references. Both figurative and dreamlike scenes are presented in a multifaceted way. Situated in this gap between the imaginary and the real, the pieces created open onto essential metaphysical and identity questions.
The use of noble materials, precious wood, crystals, feathers, coral and fossilized animal teeth, keeps the symbolic power intact. If the visual appeal operates immediately, the works only reveal their ambivalent secret in a second phase, when the visual pleasure has passed.
The artist draws on the rich heritage of her training as a cabinetmaker, upholsterer, embroiderer and feather-worker to offer her meandering introspective and her haunting memories with delicate and poetic contours.
In the series MY LOVELY BONES, the artist becomes an archaeologist of memory. First-named MICHELINE, TINA and MARIA, her vanitas are portraits of prominent women from near and far, echoing her personal genealogy. Each piece is unique and requires hundreds of hours of work. The carefully selected feathers, are glued one by one on a resin base.
Halfway between funerary outsider art and haute couture, the artist sculpts feather like one would weave a cocoon. Incantatory gestures, hypnotic technique, behind the symbols loaded with anxiety, she tries to ward off oblivion.
In the installation HER GARDEN, Laurence Le Constant reconstructs a lost Garden of Eden, conceived as a rite in different nostalgic microcosms gathering the scattered pieces of her psyche.
This arrangement combines various aspects of her artistic production and pays tribute to her grandmother, a primordial woman who raised her on her property in the depths of luxuriant countryside. The artist began correspondences with her grandmother, taking possession of imaginary alphabets and apposing symbols and paints that climb along narrative tiles as well as incantatory ornaments on everyday objects.
The act of repairing is an integral part of Laurence Le Constant’s artistic process. This resolutely benevolent and emotional life force ennoble the damaged, the forgotten, and the useless. PRISCA, SHAKTI, NOD arise from recovering damaged animal objects, suddenly brought to magnification, propelled into an animist world and summoning the supernatural.
Animal, vegetable and mineral blend with a psychological representation of humanity.
Turning the wheel of a Nordic tale in the symbolism of perpetual motion, the artist tries to achieve the regeneration.
Traduction: C. Peers.