Artist: Morgan Courtois
Exhibition title: It’s All Tied Up in a Rainbow
Venue: Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Brest, France
Date: June 2 – August 18, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain
Essentially a sculptor, even if at times his research leads him to work with images, Morgan Courtois explained in a recent interview that he quickly wished to express the “potential or the pathetic part of materials” through his work. His use of plaster, clay and resin is frequently affected by disturbances which not only alter the stability of his objects, but also give them an ambiguous status, blurring the boundary between the inert and the living. Inspired not only by the rhythm but also the functional properties of flowers, the artist – who previously worked as a gardener – also creates perfumes whose compositions evoke the poetic connections of materials, events and sensations.
The exhibition “It’s All Tied Up in a Rainbow” which takes its title from the song “Beautiful Land,” performed by Nina Simone in 1965, brings together a collection of new works including photographs of public spaces and sculptures of male nudes whose poses recall both private moments and scenes of art history. The colorful spectrum evoked by the title is revealed in a new series of resin paintings framing the central display. Morgan Courtois, who readily qualifies his practice as a naturalist, explores here an affective geography of representations, influenced not only by art history but also a social history of forms.
