Mélanie Matranga: •— •

Exhibition from 09.21 to 12.22.2018
Curated by Camille Chenais

Flyer of the exhibition, Mélanie Matranga : •— •

Villa Vassilieff is pleased to pre­sent •— •, a solo exhi­bi­tion of the french artist Mélanie Matranga (b. 1985).

Through this exhi­bi­tion with a silent and unpro­nounce­able title, Mélanie Matranga seizes Villa Vassilieff, in its charm and domes­ticity, to create a micro­cosm of objects, sen­sa­tions, emo­tions and sounds. A sen­ti­mental and inti­mate white cube where white is no longer used as a neu­tral color, but as a mate­rial whose speci city seems to be its ability to get dirty, to both con­ceal and to ll itself with traces, residues and mem­o­ries of ges­tures and moments that it wel­comed. Here,the artist cre­ates a living envi­ron­ment, where take place sculp­tures in paper and fabric that stem from common forms, almost generic. They are, for the most part, those of clothes made banal by their mass pro­duc­tion and cir­cu­la­tion. Through them and through sounds that leak from some of their pockets, the artist inter­ro­gate our com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems : clothes, as words or music, are tools that allow us to intro­duce our­selves, to exchange with others, to trans­late our per­son­al­i­ties and emo­tions.

Download the press release

•— •, by Camille Chenais

Through this exhi­bi­tion with a silent and unpro­nounce­able title, Mélanie Matranga seizes Villa Vassilieff, in its charm and domes­ticity, to create a micro­cosm of objects, sen­sa­tions, emo­tions and sounds. A sen­ti­mental and inti­mate white cube where white is no longer used as a neu­tral color, but as a mate­rial whose speci­ficity seems to be its ability to get dirty, to both con­ceal and to fill itself with traces, residues and mem­o­ries of ges­tures and moments that it wel­comed. If the envi­ron­ment is white, it is the oppo­site of the aseptic white cubes pre­sumed to be neu­tral, time­less and erected as model by our insti­tu­tions and the market. On the con­trary, the space is pre­sented as the result of past encoun­ters and the recep­tacle for encoun­ters to be lived. It oscil­lates between an apparent com­fort and a dis­creet inhos­pi­tality. Behind what appears to be, at first glance, a bour­geois appear­ance, an uneasy being tran­spires through the pores of space, seeming to have seized the walls and floors. Something over­flows and escapes from its own wrap­ping. Appearances crack, the space dis­in­te­grates. Like the skin, its sur­faces become double-sided mem­branes - one turned to the out­side world, the other turned to the inner world - that play the almost schizophrenic role of sep­a­rating these two worlds while putting them in rela­tion. But these inter­faces seem dys­func­tional, they no longer serve as fil­ters and start showing on their sur­face some forms of internal and psy­cho­log­ical scars.
Thus, Mélanie Matranga’s inter­ven­tions in the space change its def­i­ni­tion and the ways it can be per­ceived. Walls and floors no longer simply form its struc­ture, but become organic ele­ments that amplify and mimic feel­ings. Here the artist cre­ates a living envi­ron­ment that changes and evolves, a set­ting where vis­i­tors’ bodies can be placed and wander. She does not only con­ceive space in its archi­tec­tural aspect, but tries to take into account and be in touch with the people who will use it and, to some extent, acti­vate it by their pres­ence. By staging the almost overused domes­ticity of the place - with its library, counter bar, white tables and chairs - and by adding ele­ments - green plants, white carpet - Mélanie Matranga high­lights its arti­fi­ciality and the ten­sion that inhabits it, fluc­tu­ating between public space and falsely pri­vate inte­rior. In this unique atmo­sphere, sculp­tures in paper and fabric take place; like many of her works, they stem from common forms, almost generic, that the artist trans­forms, solid­i­fies or softens by reversing their mate­ri­ality. The walls relax, the clothes stiffen.
The forms used are familiar. They are, for the most part, those of clothes made banal by their mass pro­duc­tion and cir­cu­la­tion. By dint of being pro­duced, copied, coun­ter­feited, repeated and imi­tated, these clothes seem to no longer have formal sin­gu­larity. Mélanie Matranga has chosen them from her close and cir­cum­scribed uni­verse and scru­ti­nizes them to bring out what makes them common. These generic forms become pecu­liar through the treat­ment the artist puts them through; she trans­forms these gar­ments lacking quality into some­what ghostly white paper sculp­tures whose man­u­fac­turing seems instinc­tive, almost inac­cu­rate. Through her manual work, these forms, nor­mally pro­duced in series, with indus­trial methods, seem to return to the pro­to­type stage. Hypertrophied and swelling pro­to­types, prac­ti­cally fail­ures, whose pro­cess of pro­duc­tion is reflected in their seams. Like the space, these sculp­tures are white. On their sur­faces and in their folds there are wrin­kles and traces of sewing machine work, han­dling of parts, trans­port haz­ards or, simply, depending on when you visit the exhi­bi­tion, marks of time and dust that have accu­mu­lated since their arrival at Villa Vassilieff. What does not appear in the space are the bodies, the people who nor­mally wear these clothes. No human pres­ence is vis­ible in the exhi­bi­tion, with the excep­tion of the vis­i­tors. Apart from the win­dows through which a nat­ural and con­tin­u­ously changing light escapes, the only sources of light are the sculp­tures them­selves, which recur­rently house a bulb whose rays pierce the semi-opaque paper. They are dif­fused in the space and become the binding ele­ment between the dif­ferent com­po­nents of the decor put in place by Mélanie Matranga. Somehow, these lights also appear as alle­gories of the bodies that nor­mally inhabit these clothes and the way in which, through them, we try to express our inte­ri­ority which can shine through at varying degrees. Our clothes are codes that we use to dis­play a cer­tain per­son­ality, a social role, a staging of one­self, to dis­ap­pear or to appear. Those here trans­formed by the artist are pop­ular and rec­og­niz­able. Even though they form a ref­er­ence linked to a given time and place - today, Paris - they still have many places of appear­ance and dif­fu­sion between the moment of their cre­ation and the one of their dis­so­lu­tion. In a way, we all share these clothes, which become struc­tures of a col­lec­tive inti­macy as well as the signs of a non­verbal but very loqua­cious com­mu­ni­ca­tion system that con­fesses our indi­vidual, col­lec­tive, sexual and social iden­ti­ties. Words, like clothes, are tools that allow us to intro­duce our­selves, to exchange with others, to trans­late our per­son­al­i­ties and emo­tions. But these signs - words and clothes - are also designed and con­trolled by bodies that tran­scend us - a cul­ture, a state, an eco­nomic system, a pro­duc­tion net­work, or a com­mu­nity. Our inti­ma­cies are there­fore diluted in these codes which, to be effi­cient, must be generic and com­pre­hen­sible. In the exhi­bi­tion space, clothes become alle­gories of the words we employ to rep­re­sent things and our feel­ings in what makes them most ordi­nary. When we say «I», «LOVE», «HATE», all the specific char­ac­ter­is­tics and thou­sand of nuances that our feel­ings seem to have in our con­scious­ness are hidden from our­selves.
Mélanie Matranga plays with the limits of our com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems. She tries to muddle them or to find, naively or des­per­ately, an exit by way of their con­straints. She is inter­ested in how our bodies and per­son­al­i­ties try to thwart these limits, some­times naively, some­times for­tu­itously and in the ten­sion that results. Our skin, like the sur­faces of the space, sweats, blushes, and is cov­ered with signs of our some­times sti­fled emo­tions. If the clothes are empty, some of them allow an inner glow to escape, trans­lating, per­haps, as a pos­si­bility to let their «I» shine through. In these works, the idea is not to build a new log­ical and rational semi­otic system, but to express in the same move­ment the com­plexity and sim­plicity of our method­olo­gies and com­mu­ni­ca­tion strate­gies. Express without affirming. Nothing asserts itself in the space, nothing is held straight, nothing is truly rigid, nothing stands upright; things hang, things are placed, things are sus­pended. In the very con­struc­tion of space, the artist seems to refuse the cer­tain­ties, the dec­la­ra­tions; she whis­pers, sug­gests. Like the fabric sculp­tures that create unde­fined flex­ible spaces, the title of the exhi­bi­tion refuses any rigidity or encap­su­la­tion of bodies and speeches. Simply symbol, ini­tially drawn by the artist on a piece of paper, it trans­lates to, in a very pro­saic way, two points that do not arrive / are not / do not wish to be con­nected to each other via a line. This sign is in motion and declines according to the written media and its limits - com­puter key­boards, for example, have dif­fi­cul­ties in repro­ducing this form first sketched by the artist in pencil. Deliberately equiv­ocal, this title, the space of the exhi­bi­tion and the sculp­tures that take place there form emo­tional struc­tures which leave room for the vis­i­tors to pro­ject and to look for the trace of their own sen­si­tivity.