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| Didier Marcel |
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For L.F.D.A. 02.Continuing his characteristic “intrusions” of fragments from the natural world into the space of the exhibition, Didier Marcel presents his recent “Phoenix canariensis”. Palm trees are noted for their great beauty, and their easy adaptability to almost every environment. Didier Marcel’s palms are from Jardins de la Petite Afrique (the African botanic gardens) in Monaco. Casts are taken from the plants, then transferred to his studio. The results are quite literally copied from nature, but the plants are completely de-natured nonetheless : the resin casts are cut up leaving only the trunks, then encased in steel rings and covered with white flocking. The resulting forms are both realistic – easily identified as fragments of trees – and unreal, thanks to the industrial treatment to which they have been subjected. They presented lying on their sides, on elegant steel supports, forming structural motifs in a new landscape shaped by art. The Romantics adored the wild profusion of disordered, untouched nature. Here, however, nature has been regulated and structured by man (in the person of the artist), using certain natural elements for his own ends, to create his own carefully structured space. Other, still more incongruous elements in this new landscape are the casts of fragments of freshly-turned earth, mounted on the wall and framed by Didier Marcel. These irregular, polygonal forms are presented as pictures (shaped canvases) on oblique walls, creating an impression of the “tipping-up” of the exhibition space : the trees lie horizontally, while the clods of earth are vertical. The ensemble explores the nature of the motif in ornamental sculpture. Didier MarcelAside from reducing the reality of elements from rural or urban environments, Didier Marcel here re-creates in the neutral and antiseptic space of a white cube, an abstract and ornamental landscape, one that is harmonious and nuanced with colour. Uprooted, moulded, reproduced in various industrial materials and exhibited on a rotating basis, his tree trunks, motorized bicycles, house models or fragments of laboured field become parts of a knowledgeably composed décor, calling the spectator to a new understanding of the object and the space in which it evolves. [M. A.] Didier Marcel was born in 1961 in Besançon.
 Didier Marcel |
