VESTIBULES

The 'Vestibules' exhibition was conceived as a dialogue between two mutually echoing sculptural and pictorial practices. The selection of works, brought together specifically by Côme Clérino and Io Burgard for this exhibition, attempts to create an intimate space, a living room where the objects that populate it are both visual and functional.

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Côme Clérino explores textures and materials with apparent qualities that we might readily describe as poor: close to a building site aesthetic, his works go from the smoothness of ceramics to the roughness of plaster, all enhanced by colours that are sometimes pastel, sometimes bold, in a kind of dissonant harmony. The materials are so commonplace that they seem familiar, especially when combined with everyday objects such as this two-in-one desk or the carpet on the floor. The works also shine through the complicity they generate when we discover the small details that nestle in them, making the artistic gesture sensitive and remarkable: "Because although Côme Clérino defines himself fundamentally as a painter, far be it from him to remain confined to the simple flatness of canvases. He is enthusiastic about confronting different mediums, formats and practices. In this way, the artist sets painting in motion, and with it the visitors. Nothing is possible without the collaboration of those who discover the exhibition. *

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For her part, Io Burgard works on the same ambiguity between work and everyday object, with evocative titles such as Porte-clope et porte-menton and Boîte à bière. In the pieces she has selected for "Vestibules", a dialogue is created with Côme Clerino in the same combination of smooth and rough, immaculate whites and sharp colours. But for her, it's more a question of the body, with these plaster casts in anthropomorphic forms (like Grand danseur bleu or Chaise musicale) or these silhouettes executed with a deliberately succinct and sufficiently evocative stroke: "Here and there we recognise a nascent torso, the curve of a thigh, the fragment of an arm. They become bodies, like the motifs painted on the canvases that frame them and reproduce the unresolved line of the sketch. These are minimal, curved, delicate, light forms, come to the surface of the rough material, often coating and sometimes plaster, that covers the canvas. Whether Io Burgard is sculpting or painting, she never abandons this rough base [...]" **.

 

* Camille Bardin, art critic

** Solenn Morel, Director of the Centre Les Capucins, Embrun

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On view until 12 November 2022.