Reception with the artist: Saturday, 23 November, 18h-20h
MOULDING EXTENSION
Brigitte Mulholland presents MOULDING EXTENSION, the inaugural solo exhibition of French artist Emily Orta. Three distinctive zones, CABINET, METAMORPHOSIS and BESTIAIRE call viewers into a potent bodily journey; their own corporeal form is compelled to lean in closer, to circulate, to become enmeshed in the unfolding growth of Orta’s otherworldly entities.
The title of the show conjures the artist’s sculptural process. Manipulation, invention, and interpretation of the inanimate clay catalyses distinctive yet enigmatic forms that evolve from fleshy bacterial-like matter into raw animalistic subjects writhing in a state of flux before arriving into fully formed surrealist chimeras. Just as the human body flows in a constant state of cellular transformation, forming and reforming, Orta’s work parallels this organic fluidity. The three progressive zones illuminate the symbiosis between material and immaterial realms evoking the infinite mutation of flesh in contrast to the eternal haunting of soul. Each sculpture is one fragment of a life-cycle and a reminder of the shaping and reshaping of tactile yet intangible identity.
CABINET
Entering the primary zone, CABINET unveils a curious close contact with the microscopic, taking flight from Orta’s investigations at the Musée du Moulage. Like mercurial phantoms, ambiguous formscarry a kinetic power reminiscent of bacteria merging to alchemise connective tissue. Pieces such as Corps Nu, Salinibacter Ruber and You look a bit glassy appear soft, squishy, sticky like ectoplasmic substance, moving through a tornado to create life. Works such as Dunaliella Salina appear with striations and indents echoing fossilised cells. In Before you leave, let me take you on a brief tour of my treasure ship, two large folding masses are held together with a cartilage-like binding agent like swept up whale bones on an Icelandic shore, entwined fragments of a long-gone creature or one yet to exist. In Love Nesting, the singular sculpture appears as two separate beings melting into one another, or bacterial larvae, wingless and magnetised by emergent life. As though flesh was incised to reveal an inner world of miniature living particles, the viewer is invited to become an active participant in the making process, circulating their own body through the space to animate these microbial sculptures into the successional species witnessed in METAMORPHOSIS.
METAMORPHOSIS
As a transitory zone, a series of blue and black species emerge from their embryonic origins. Although partially amorphous, sculptures collide both abstract and literal states, taking on animalistic traits such as feet or neck-like tubular forms as seen in Camponotus which suggests a labyrinth of potentials routes to growth.They hold the eye with an uncanny, hypnotic beauty calling the viewer to go inside the species, like sirens calling souls to lean in closer. I stopped taking medicine and let the purple bloom is inspired by Joan Slonczewski’s A Door into the Ocean. Here the sculpture’s feet-like form stabilises its fluidity, transitioning it from a cellular amalgamation into a strengthened being. Lady Lystrailly confronts with an unknown gaze from an absent eye. Like an enchanted mermaid, its body bubbles in cerulean depths, rising up to swallow viewers into its internalised hold.
BESTIAIRE
Entering the final zone, BESTIAIRE calls viewers to stand to attention and confront a wall of eleven chimeras, lined up like taxidermy sculptures in a grand hall, spectacles of fully-formed part. These unknown hybrid creatures connote new life, with human names such as Ezra, Bobby and Heather. Reigning over them are two human-animal interspecies, Deucalion and Pyrrha with the strength and weight of a sphinx, their become benevolent protectors, like in Ancient Egypt they take on a role as guardians of BESTIAIRE’s sacred space.
Text by Charlotte Brohier
