Hard Care
Text by: Indira Béraud
February 27, 2020 — June 2, 2020
La Galerie du Centre Hospitalier Métropole Savoie
Chambéry, France.
For two months, Floryan Varennes spent time at the Centre Hospitalier
Métropole Savoie. Placed in the intensive care unit, the artist-in-residence
was confronted to this transitory place, under pressure, where life only hangs
by a thread. His stay at the institute is circumstantial – medical tools make
up a big part of his plastic vocabulary: used insulin syringes, braces, and
cervical collars are examples of objects he has been using since his
beginnings. The plastic artist exerts the same moves as the surgeon; he cuts,
alters, and recuts materials in order to give them a new shape, a new body.
This stay, during which he was able to meet hospital staff, enabled him to
delve in his research and to create brand new pieces. A sculpture and a series
of bas-reliefs give birth to the exhibit “Hard-Care”: hard-core (brutal) or
hard “corps” (“corps” meaning body in French) developed into “Hard Care”. This
title conjugates the intensity of care and treatment, and the difficulty faced
by the patients. It foreshadows a work that deploys itself as an oxymoron –
where the tension between the diverging shapes and materials is permanent.
The intensive care unit, in front of which
stand the pieces, welcomes patients that have one or several organ failures.
The critical state of these patients forces the doctors to keep them under high
surveillance, day and night, during which their survival is an incessant,
laborious and violent struggle. The question of survival is a cornerstone in
the artist’s work. The survival of the body on a physical level of course – but
he also conveys other forms of survival: legacy, heritage, and memory. For Floryan
Varennes, who adopts a medievalist position, the reminiscence of the Middle-age
constitute a bottomless source of inspiration; he is interested in the
cultural, social and political illustrations that result from that era. He
appropriates for himself certain visual attributes that come from the world of
chivalry, which he then transposes into the hospital world. In his work, the
struggle of the knight is analogous to the struggle of the patient. The
sculptures borrow the shapes of medieval armours, in particular spaulders from
the 15th century, which are reimagined using modern materials.
The violence – which could’ve been perceived from this coercive piece of
equipment, finds itself countered, and even exalted by flexible PVC tape, which
is usually used to separate different areas within the hospital. This
transparent protection makes the body – which is already so monitored and
assisted – even more visible. Instead of concealing it, the series “La Meute”
conjures up anonymous and missing bodies. From chest to cuff, fragmented
pieces, maintained by rivets, constitute a second skin; a sophisticated set of
jewellery onto which the artist adds different ornaments, earrings, and armour
straps. The strips – the visual signature of the artist – hang down, and end on
triangular rings. All of these figures of iconographic frameworks hail from
medieval manuscripts, such as the Codex Manesse and the Morgan Bible – both
references in the discipline. The protruding and enveloping shape of the pieces
evokes a protective cocoon – while the anthropomorphic character of these
entities bestows upon them the allure of guarding sculptures. Mutant faces
appear from these different components: structures made of stainless steel,
perfusion tubes that look like electric cables. These state-of-the-art
connexions give them an artificial aspect. The pieces convey the image of a
cyborg mutating: ghost-like bodies, floating from organic anatomy to metal
units. Arms and legs apart, these chrysalides are stretched by ropes, whose
precarious balance conveys a suspended, parallel temporality, in which
references to a fantasized era are intertwined.
Indira
Béraud
Translated
by Thomas Alden