Galerie Marine Veilleux
Art Rotterdam 2016

Anne-Charlotte Yver | Exsangue

” Latex was an obvious choice for me, in relation to very subjective instincts. To revisit the example
of Abi Warburg’s Serpent Ritual, I feel I’m working on the same symbolic shift than for
the lightning snake. In any case, I identify with the way a tangible manipulation interweaves
connections, as in an archaic ritual invested by a deep meaning: the understanding of a situation
through a significant analogon. Latex is a fluid which flows from the vessels of a tree, and it is
collected by a process called « grooving »; it clots till it forms an ultra-resistant, elastic material
and translucent skin that darkens when in contact with UV rays. In this project where elements
are interchangeable and become skeletons, surfaces, flesh, masses, structures or skins and where
sculpture takes shape by assembling these elements, latex clearly stands for a fluid (blood) and a
membrane. Steel dissects, controls and experiments on this evasive material, which shrinks and
changes appearances, and becomes so thin when it stretches that it tends to escape from the
vise that holds it. Latex is a medium that did not stick to what we expect a medium to be, but that
found a certain mannerism during its progressive manufacturing. The production process actually
deals with control: what resists it – like this thrill for detail in the structure, and what doesn’t.
Neon tubes broadcast UV rays through the substance and evoke the changing of the color while
making it glow, as a way to keep the clotted material active, lively and warm once its transformation
completed. It is to a certain extent giving back some vital energy to a dead matter, always as
a relentless, monstrous and desperate Frankenstein-like experiment.”

Anne-Charlotte Yver / Correspondence on “Exsangue” – July . August 2015