Break my body, hold my bones, 2009

exhibition view at Le Spot, Le Havre, 2009

Happy house II, 2012
polystyrene, wood, rope, tape, painting, serreflex, gunny 250 x 100 x 15 cm
production La Salle de Bains, Lyon

Campagne/ Campagnes, exhibition view at Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux, 2013

A fist is fast and Jimmie’s cast Hang me, 2010
wood, polystyrene beam, basket ball ring, piano wires, painting, 250 x 60 x 30 cm

Hang Wire, 2010
piano keys, crossbar, curtains, pebbledash, painting, 200x250x350

Move on over here, slow it down, 2010
ropes, painting, coating, bars, parquet, partitions, railway crossbeam, ondobitume

Starving in the belly of a whale, 2009
Pine staircase, venetian blind strips, nylon security straps, paint, 300 x 400 x 145 cm

all images courtesy of STEPHANIE CHERPIN (unless otherwise stated)

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The works of French artist STEPHANIE CHERPIN inhabit space in a dramatic way by manipulating modest materials, textures, scales and subtle colors. Her works depart from wastelands, construction materials, post-industrial landscape and other undefined areas to offer a sculptural encounters between humans, technology, nature, the parallel experience of time and the spontaneous impulses that some places generate and embody.

Assembling her sculptures quickly and intuitively, they become distant memories of objects fusing creation and destruction rather than faithful constructions. Furthermore her installations actively engage viewers by drawing them among, and around obstacles in much the same way that the city does on a daily basis.

Her sculptures create tension, show their teeth, they deliberately obstruct the passage and trip us up, take over a space like weeds that one can never quite eradicate, they spill over and provoke, and in this sense evoke a multitude of parallels with grunge culture. – PAUL BERNARD

And good news: STEPHANIE CHERPIN‘s first monograph has just been released by Les Presses du Réel, more info here

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