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CAROLE MOUSSET
CAROLE MOUSSET
Corruptible Bodies
Installation views, Suzanne Tarasieve gallery, Paris, 2023
"Carole Mousset unleashes fantastical, organic forms, somewhere between human, animal, and vegetal, onto her
canvases. She reframes subjects whose visceral nature we can only intuit, without knowing exactly what they're
about. The titles, whether poetic or deliberately trashy, alternately distance us from and bring us closer to the
subject. Aujourd'hui plus qu'hier et bien moins que demain (Today more than yesterday and much less than
tomorrow) is a very direct depiction of the organ of love, while It Crawls, It Creeps evokes the lurid titles of body
horror films and novels from the ‘80s and ‘90s, in particular those by Clive Barker or David Cronenberg. Qui se
baigne ne se reflète pas [Those who bathe have no reflection] refers to Gaston Bachelard's essay “L'Eau et les
Rêves” [Water and Dreams]: “By disturbing the waters, the bather breaks up her own image. The one who bathes
is not reflected in the water.”
A hint suggests the question of the gaze is central to Mousset’s work: the visions she conjures up are a priori
images of the inaccessible, of what by definition cannot be seen, hidden by layers of skin and fabric. At the same
time, soft pastel hues are arranged around lidless eyes that stare back at us. This gazing flesh changes substance
from one painting to the next: viscous, fluid, flowing, naked. The teeming spectacle it conjures up evokes a mixture
of attraction and repulsion; in other words, pure fascination."
"Carole Mousset unleashes fantastical, organic forms, somewhere between human, animal, and vegetal, onto her
canvases. She reframes subjects whose visceral nature we can only intuit, without knowing exactly what they're
about. The titles, whether poetic or deliberately trashy, alternately distance us from and bring us closer to the
subject. Aujourd'hui plus qu'hier et bien moins que demain (Today more than yesterday and much less than
tomorrow) is a very direct depiction of the organ of love, while It Crawls, It Creeps evokes the lurid titles of body
horror films and novels from the ‘80s and ‘90s, in particular those by Clive Barker or David Cronenberg. Qui se
baigne ne se reflète pas [Those who bathe have no reflection] refers to Gaston Bachelard's essay “L'Eau et les
Rêves” [Water and Dreams]: “By disturbing the waters, the bather breaks up her own image. The one who bathes
is not reflected in the water.”
A hint suggests the question of the gaze is central to Mousset’s work: the visions she conjures up are a priori
images of the inaccessible, of what by definition cannot be seen, hidden by layers of skin and fabric. At the same
time, soft pastel hues are arranged around lidless eyes that stare back at us. This gazing flesh changes substance
from one painting to the next: viscous, fluid, flowing, naked. The teeming spectacle it conjures up evokes a mixture
of attraction and repulsion; in other words, pure fascination."
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