In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder tells the story of the Corinthian Potter’s daughter who, in the light of a candle, draws the silhouette of her beloved, projected on the wall of the bedroom, the day before her departure for a long journey.
The father imprints and dries it in the sun, just as Fanny Alloing finds consolation in the sculpture, after the disappearance of her young aunt. Very gently, like a doctor bandages the wounds of a patient, she deposits plaster straps on the body of people she knows and loves. She removes this plaster that takes the shape of the body and exposes it.
For some time, she has been coating it with clay. Once detached from its plaster matrix, the clay keeps the smallest traces of the skin. This technique of her invention materializes like magic the density and materiality of the flesh. For Fanny Alloing, plaster represents the soul, the clay emulates, the fleshly part. Sculpture becomes a consolation of the human condition, which stands between life and death.
Ileana Cornea – artension hors-série n°30
