Marielle Degioanni picks at the surface…

Marielle Degioanni picks at the surface …

Anne Malherbe, art historian and art critic, 2019.

Marielle Degioanni picks at the surface of the sheet with small, tightly packed needle strokes. The succession of these tiny reliefs draws vegetal interlacing, nervures, hair. Depending on the case, one could say that they are embroidery, acupuncture or a cloud of particles. White on white, they reveal the presence of the paper and transform it into an organic surface. They are often extended by watercolour, pale pink, liquid, with a hint of bright red. Suggestive of feminine attributes, watercolour contributes to the eroticization of the works. Suspended in the middle of the page, each composition appears as the momentary crystallisation of a fluid. It seems to emerge from the mist, as if it were the emanation of the vacuum, a flowering from the empty depths. It contains many antinomies: the pain of the stings and the softness of the line, the coldness of the white and the warm openness of the forms, the reserve of space and the presence of red. It is as if the artist puts a bit of her own flesh into each of them.