Press release
Wandering Sculptures
In a matter that traditionally uses heavy materials, Francoise Coutant creates sculptures of a singular lightness. A lightness that result not only in materials (feathers, dandelion, eggshells or snails, poppies …) but also in words used to reveal the idea behind its forms. Those light works therefore set delicately something as evanescent as dreams, from real to unreal or even surreal. ?
The artist manages to give substance to abstract concepts. She speaks of time through a hourglass but transforms it into corset (”Another Time”). She questions the origin of things with this huge hen whose feathers are made of paper prints of leaves - standing in an cage opened to the wind, which houses a small sized egg (The hen or the egg). An egg that often appears in the world of the artist. An egg as fragile as existence. As in many of her works, mixing life and death, telling the ephemeral of things.
Francoise Coutant likes to hang her sculptures to invisible threads, thus making them wandering in the air. Like this armchair made of dandelions that become as light as air or the stairs that lead to improbable elsewhere.
Always working with humor, the artist likes to take a walk with a cloud ("promenoir à nuage"), or create “special items” like this “Nombril aviaire” ( Egg Navel ) or “Artist’s Divan” made of eggshells and thus unlikely useful.
Francoise Coutant’s work leads us into her poetic world, far above the conventions, far above the ordinary.