“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light enters” Leonard Cohen sang.

This is what Fanny Alloing’s work illustrates. First, molded prints: face, bust. Then, her creations became larger, with body prints, made on nude models, often dancers – she is a former dancer. Split, cracked, they appear frail, fragile like molt skins: she calls them “chrysalis”.

Her artistic work is recent: “I started to present my clay molds in 2014” she explains. I used to stage molts of plaster. The imprint, as close as possible to the being that laid down, and the exit of the model of its chrysalis: this is the essence of my work”. For five years, the plaster has become a matrix, she manipulates the clay in thin layers inside, resulting in thick works of two centimeters, “thin as autumn leaves”. Each step has a symbolic value. First, the process: “Molding is a two-person experience and when people come out of the mold, it’s like a rebirth.” The materials, then: “The plaster nudes are ghostly, like an insect molt, when I stamp the clay inside the plasters, I find the density of the flesh”. Then comes the transport of the dry clay print for cooking, with the possibility of its destruction, the extreme delicacy of the molding can cause the loss. Approach and object speak of the body, of the experience of the body as knowledge of finitude and intuition of its mortality. Here is the foundation of this tragic sense of human destiny, embodied in a fleshly envelope where grace and fragility intermingle.

From the appearance of mummies wrapped in plaster strips of her beginnings, the human “chrysalis” of Fanny Alloing have reached, by the passage to terracotta, an additional force of evocation. The crude of the material that cracks, mingles with the sophistication of the enameling effects and the subtlety of the rendering of the bodies. There is acute empathy for man, who speaks of the bond, the vulnerability, and the dignity. This “fight to keep the being”, of which the ceramist speaks about the process of creation, acquires its second, deeper, metaphysical meaning.

Mikaël Faujour / La revue de la céramique et du verre

It is sculpted silence, silence filled with recollection and peace. Fanny Alloing gives it a human appearance. The face is placid, the eyes are closed, the mouth traces a fold that deforms no bitterness or anger. It happens inside the skull, in a meditation to which we are not invited, we can only imagine, according to our feeling in front of the features of the model immortalized by the clay. We are silent and for once, we leave to the cloakroom the untimely chirping of our consciences. Fanny Alloing invites us to temper the tumults of the world, to recollect. Life quickly becomes more fiery and enthusiastic if we know from time to time to give ourselves up to listen to our heartbeat. And let go for a few moments, the social mask to replace it with another, more serene.

B.L – Miroir de l’Art n°107

“The work modeled in modernity speaks of the eternity of the human condition”.

Armed with practice as a dancer, the artist proposes a ballet in frozen movement. It is up to us to grasp how these body envelopes are placed in silence. Weightless and gentle. Far from the corpse, some see sisters of mummies, brothers of recumbents. Worked in series: faces, small busts, with or without arms, crossed or not, playing on the expression, closed eyes, but also the movement, almost the resurrection, in the gestures of their positioning. The work is as striking as it is moving.

Fanny tells us that she likes Auguste Rodin, in addition to Louise Bourgeois. Apart from the unfailing connection he also maintained with dance, she cites her monumental centerpiece, The Gate of Hell, as a reference. Fanny Alloing sculpts the memory, prints the trace, shapes the memory. The work modeled in modernity speaks of the eternity of the human condition, without concern for genre or time. Universal. Africa, Asia, Europe, ancestral times, and contemporary times – without the imposture of posture or hollow concept -, everything intersects and responds. Echoing, the form resonates in the background, a simple but moving poetry.

Extracts from Patrick Le Fur’s article in Artension n°154 ( March- April 2019 )