Morgane Tschiember’s work questions issues of perception, whether olfactory, tactile, sonic, visual or metaphysical. She explores natural phenomena and their elaborate interpretations, experimenting with them to better grasp them. The Skin Poem series is accompanied by a critical viewpoint on the prevailing ecological discourse in the art world, and in particular on the hypocrisy of its practices in terms of the carbon footprint, to which it contributes, and the use of toxic materials that poison it itself.
Her work is best known for its use of highly physical industrial or artisanal elements, which she transfigures to push back their limits and lend them a certain sensuality. Surpassing the known possibilities of technique, her recent works explore new mixtures of materials and manufacturing processes, subtly revealing the energy that runs through them.
This is a new series of ALL OVER on colored polyether foam, a texture and support both rigid and supple, in shades of blush pink, soaked in wax and other industrial liquids. The series involves several stages. In a second stage, after the skins have dried in the sun, numerous veins and marbling appear like lightning bolts in the thickness of the skins due to the weight of the artist’s body in motion on the material. In a third step, the skins are branded, revealing a poem. This series echoes Dust Devil, the principle of breakage and marbling of fulminating matter; the micro-points of explosion in his sculptures result, this time, from the encrustation of dust in blown glass. Morgane Tschiember is preoccupied by these relationships of friction and phenomena of energy extraction, creating veritable constellations. Together, the skins form a long poem. The first in the series is entitled You were my antidote, on which is engraved the phrase I POISONED MYSELF, which gives its title to the exhibition she opened in May 2024 in New York. Morgane Tschiember’s work is influenced by conceptual minimalist artists such as Ed Ruscha. The Skin Poems reveal themselves when you take the time to read the title of the work, which is the key to the other phrase hot-stamped on the skin.