Hygie and Panacea

by Frédérique Nalbandian

Hygie and Panacea exhibition, Frédérique Nalbandian, Galerie Eva Vautier, May 2021 © Photos François Fernandez

Touch

“To tell life, action verbs are more useful than words “*.

Action verbs are at the heart of Frédérique Nalbandian’s work. The artist grasps, dips, crumples, manipulates, sculpts, shapes the soap. Patiently and with strength, she gives life to ancient forms. The figures of Hygie and Panacea, goddesses personifying respectively health and universal remedy, welcome us to the gallery which takes on the appearance of a temple with its high and narrow space. How can we not look at this work of soap with amazement when we live in an unprecedented obsession with hand washing and fear of disease?

Frédérique Nalbandian invites the visitor to touch her work after having wet her hands. A profane purification ceremony is performed in the art space. We touch the statue, and the chemistry of the soap works. Under contingent appearances, soap is in fact a very compact, solid material that can remain unchanged for a very long time, even in the presence of water. Indeed, without friction, the wet soap does not deteriorate much. It is necessary to rub it, to caress it, to fully grasp it so that it starts to disappear.
The viewer takes part in the “creative process “*: his imagination is elsewhere, in Greece, in the ruins of a temple while his body and his spirit are there, summoned through the sense of smell, sight, hearing and touch: “This phenomenon can be compared to a ‘transfer’ of the artist to the viewer in the form of an aesthetic osmosis which takes place through the inert matter “*.

The artist touches to form, and at the same time, the artist invites us to touch when touching the other has become almost forbidden. These rubbings, frictions, caresses are at the heart of a strange history of sculpture: that of the beliefs and superstitions in the name of which, by gestures repeated a thousand times, the public alters statues whose contact is supposed to bring happiness, guarantee love, healing. These tender yet destructive gestures alter the color of a marble or smooth the surface of a bronze to a point designated as magical. We touch then to touch right. The stigmas of these beliefs and superstitions are functions of time, of the number of caresses, of the strength of the rubbings, parameters of a mechanics of the vow, of a physics of the promise.

* Olivier Remaud, Penser comme un iceberg, Actes Sud, collection Mondes sauvages, October 2020
* Marcel Duchamp, The creative process, Envois, L’échoppe, November 1987
* Marcel Duchamp, The creative process, Envois, L’échoppe, November 1987

Text by Bérangère Armand

Report realized by Alain Amiel