I’ve got you under Their skin – Isabelle Plat

After her first solo show in 2016 and a booth at ArtParis in April 2019, for which she made a baroque, hairy cavern from steel and animal hair, Isabelle Plat will present her new solo exhibition, I’ve got you under their skin from March 14- April 18 2020 at the Galerie Eric Mouchet.

Recent works by Isabelle Plat are a breath of fresh air for 21st century sculpture. Her approach or, a priori, practice stems both from science (epistemology), savoir-faire (craftsmanship and post-medium) and a certain ecology (feminine/masculine/animal relationships).

From her first sculptures which already incorporate notions of torsion and the unsettled body of the viewer, in Slaughtered Ox in 2020, a certain conception of surface has been constructed and no longer limits itself to its two-dimensional surface area, or simply to the external face of a body. The work of sculptor Isabelle Plat acts like a membrane, taking all possible contacts with materials into account.

Right away, the “How did you make it?” question arises!
Turned inside-out like a glove, pants, a coat, a shirt, or even the male/female genital apparatus (Reversible Intimacy), containers become contents. Their material, added to the interior of a pliable mesh network made from human and cow hair and resin, petrified with solvents, primer and sealant, mixed with fabric, sewn, pierced with holes, resewn and even painted, to keep it all together.

Masculin / Feminin
A man’s Burberry coat (Darcey offers you his Burberry) references a particular social status, which clashes with its double: a woman’s cheap flowered night shirt. The intrusion of the trivial upon the elegant certainly references class wars, but mostly points to breaking the social codes, transgressing the border: the border separating the sexes, artistic genres, the intimate from the “extimate”. Men’s suits are literally stuffed with women’s suits. Very simply, from the interior, with sharp discretion, Isabelle Plat profanes the conventions.

“Un-skinned” Baroque
Two key characteristics of the baroque style are synthesized within the sculptures of Isabelle Plat: the study of movement, and the proximity to the vernacular in the expression of the sublime. For instance, a bloody red interior gives a large black wool coat (Whirling Dirvish) the quality of freshly peeled skin, with drops of scarlet resin seem to crawl upwards rather than drip to the ground. Is it painting in ecstasy? The image reminds us of the red threads of Vermeer’s The Lacemaker that symbolize menstrual blood, marking the blank page of every female worker on the day of her passage into womanhood.

Baroque usage of devices that bring the viewer and the work to the same level: it’s a bit like the baldachin of Saint Peter’s in Rome, which we find on a large pink satin ribbon that ties the feet of the Slaughtered Ox hung from metal hooks!