Casting

Exhibition view casting 10 N, Bruxelles, Belgium

I spent the last year in a studio high up in Montmartre, as if plunged into the sky. I was preparing an exhibition at 10N, for which I wanted to make concrete sculptures. I chose the title Casting for its reference to molding, but also for the idea that a multitude of people are willing to play one role. In this studio in the sky, It wasn’t possible to make sculptures of such weight and size. Instead, I started compulsively drawing what became the nights in the exhibition. I envisaged these variations in black and grey as tormented landscapes: where the sky, the earth and the spirit mingle. These same variations in tone would later become the palette for the sculptures, as if they were emerging from a lunar landscape. It was only afterwards that I also started to see details of draperies in these landscapes. I became interested in the use of drapery in sculpture and classical painting. I discovered that the movement of fabrics, carried by the wind, enabled Renaissance artists to suggest the dynamics of passions, which could not be represented by the female bodies themselves. I decided to install oversized curtains in the space of 10N, both to echo these drapes and to give the exhibition a disquieting strangeness. These trailing curtains call us to look to the outside where the sculptures are. They are all named after winds. The imprint of bodies sprawl and protrude across the surface. I chose to mould specific parts and poses of models, re-enacting gestures embodied by female figures repeated throughout the history of Western art. Gestures that we still see today in reminiscent forms. I wanted these postures to split, multiply, metamorphose and dissipate like a glitch, a bug in the matrix of these infinite repetitions.. The cartoon drops that trickle down the sculptures are tears, rain and sweat simultaneously. They accentuate the frozeness of the moment within which the sculptures were conceived. The drops are treated with a retro-reflective material, like the metal bases and the reflections on the drapes. This light-reflecting material makes these elements hyper visible at night. The sculptures are carnal ghosts, half done, half undone. They embody the essence of these archetypal feminine entities through their state of invocation, for they themselves are cast in a state of evocation Isn’t the idea of the feminine in itself a disturbing strangeness? A symptom, in other words, a malaise of representation? In his two books Ninfa fluida and Ninfa Profunda, Georges Didi-Huberman explores the nymph motif and its sometimes luminous and sometimes sombre representations, invoked throughout the history of art. These feminine motifs are always associated with winds, storms and tempests. He quotes a passage from Victor Hugo’s Les Travailleurs de la mer: «...the roundness of mysterious breasts, modest arms, hair untied in the dawn, ineffable hips modelled in paleness in a sacred mist, the forms of a nymph, the gaze of a virgin, a Venus emerging from the sea, an Eve emerging from chaos; such was the dream that it was impossible not to have. It was improbable that there was not a ghost there.» I sometimes wonder if repeatedly calling upon these entities unintentionally invites their haunting presence, leaving the idea of femininity shifting within us like a lingering ghost. My grandmother always says «be careful what you wish for»

Haberdashery SHOW

Exhibition view Haberdashery Show La mercerie, Bruxelles, Belgium

Fuite romanesque 

Exhibition view Fuite Romanesque 
Cité des arts de Paris, France

Installation 2022, corner structure paint in Green Chroma key 240x120cm, fibre glass, resin,
model 34x23cm, cardboard, papers, light, cristals

Fuite romanesque by Sarah Caillard is an installation comprising a translucent dress made of fibreglass and resin that is placed in front of a large corner structure painted in "Chroma Key
Green" (the colour commonly used for greenscreen special effects). Elements filmed or photographed against this backdrop can therefore be isolated and placed elsewhere, thereby changing their scale, location and manipulating the context. The scene dedicated to this process of inlaying images is a scale model of the exhibition space itself, which is placed on a small pedestal. The scale model allows us to look inside at the static scene and imagine the various elements placed within the Chroma Key Green structure coming to life, projected into a dreamlike, uncanny, and cartoonish scenography.
The installation is a reflection on the mechanisms of imagination. It takes a look at how we constantly move back and forth between the real and virtual worlds, sometimes without even realising it. In this virtual scene, the notion of scale becomes confused and the relationship between inside and outside is disturbed as surfaces reveal bodies that are not present. Our gaze becomes the director of a possible narrative, one that allows the elements to unite and the movements to exist.

Sarah Caillard (France) is in residency as part of the Cité internationale des arts "2-12" program.
Thanks to WBI and Centre Wallonie Bruxelles Paris

The temptation to be a fiction

Reinforced concrete, polystyrene 169x56x22cm
Fiberglass, epoxy resin 163x50x 60 cm

Sculpture is a ghost in itself, it is the image of what is no longer there. In “The temptation to be a fiction” a woman’s body is caught in concrete, like a vestige of our contemporary world. It’s the idea of a body, a femininity and the heaviness it implies. It’s also the idea of the classic tradition and the notion of ruin.
The ghost is presence by absence. He terrifies by what he represents no more than by what he is. A transgender being, a paradoxical body. Dive into a state of inter-matter, it symbolizes the duality of existence.
The two stand side by side, Their gestures, however frozen, seem to have transcended time, they become the receptacle of a projection the place of fantasy. Fantasy meant ghost until the 14th century and finally defined a production of the imagination that allows the self to escape reality.
We do not become adults in the world that we knew, child or adolescent, we are seduced by the idea of all who we have been and who we are no longer. The hardest part is finding the presence.
like a ghost we are caught in the meantime it’s also being able to wear seconds skin, to be the same and the other, the temptation to be a fiction.

Night fever

Model 29x29x47cm  
Cardboard, aluminium, epoxy resin, fibre glass, concrete iron, varnish, lamp

vidéo 1min19
https://vimeo.com/469519476/78f401c48b

Night fever 150x47x36cm  
Reinforced concrete, steal, paint, resin

The model of a nightclub becomes the set for a video in which a character in flesh shares a dance with a ghost created from resin and fiber glass.

Line up

model 50x30x40cm
feather board, polystyrene, fabric, velvet, paper, concrete iron, varnish, lamp 
Psyche
reflective fabric, foam,160cm
S.
reinforced concrete, pigment, corboleum 183x53x36cm
L’attente
reinforced concrete, polystyrene 169x56x22cm 
Ghost
Fiberglass, epoxy resin 163x50x 60 cm
Nabilla
jesmonite, fibreglass, pigment, carboleum, paint, epoxy resin 
156x67x36cm

This installation presents the different figures that populate Sarah's work. The different materials and techniques are used to embody their allegorical relationship: concrete is used to create bodies/architectures evoking a certain gravity. Resin and fibreglass represent ghostly presences. The retro-reflective fabric confronts us with a phenomenon of vision where the forms are perceptible through the light that the properties of this fabric allow to project. 

Casting

Exhibition view casting 10 N, Bruxelles, Belgium

I spent the last year in a studio high up in Montmartre, as if plunged into the sky. I was preparing an exhibition at 10N, for which I wanted to make concrete sculptures. I chose the title Casting for its reference to molding, but also for the idea that a multitude of people are willing to play one role. In this studio in the sky, It wasn’t possible to make sculptures of such weight and size. Instead, I started compulsively drawing what became the nights in the exhibition. I envisaged these variations in black and grey as tormented landscapes: where the sky, the earth and the spirit mingle. These same variations in tone would later become the palette for the sculptures, as if they were emerging from a lunar landscape. It was only afterwards that I also started to see details of draperies in these landscapes. I became interested in the use of drapery in sculpture and classical painting. I discovered that the movement of fabrics, carried by the wind, enabled Renaissance artists to suggest the dynamics of passions, which could not be represented by the female bodies themselves. I decided to install oversized curtains in the space of 10N, both to echo these drapes and to give the exhibition a disquieting strangeness. These trailing curtains call us to look to the outside where the sculptures are. They are all named after winds. The imprint of bodies sprawl and protrude across the surface. I chose to mould specific parts and poses of models, re-enacting gestures embodied by female figures repeated throughout the history of Western art. Gestures that we still see today in reminiscent forms. I wanted these postures to split, multiply, metamorphose and dissipate like a glitch, a bug in the matrix of these infinite repetitions.. The cartoon drops that trickle down the sculptures are tears, rain and sweat simultaneously. They accentuate the frozeness of the moment within which the sculptures were conceived. The drops are treated with a retro-reflective material, like the metal bases and the reflections on the drapes. This light-reflecting material makes these elements hyper visible at night. The sculptures are carnal ghosts, half done, half undone. They embody the essence of these archetypal feminine entities through their state of invocation, for they themselves are cast in a state of evocation Isn’t the idea of the feminine in itself a disturbing strangeness? A symptom, in other words, a malaise of representation? In his two books Ninfa fluida and Ninfa Profunda, Georges Didi-Huberman explores the nymph motif and its sometimes luminous and sometimes sombre representations, invoked throughout the history of art. These feminine motifs are always associated with winds, storms and tempests. He quotes a passage from Victor Hugo’s Les Travailleurs de la mer: «...the roundness of mysterious breasts, modest arms, hair untied in the dawn, ineffable hips modelled in paleness in a sacred mist, the forms of a nymph, the gaze of a virgin, a Venus emerging from the sea, an Eve emerging from chaos; such was the dream that it was impossible not to have. It was improbable that there was not a ghost there.» I sometimes wonder if repeatedly calling upon these entities unintentionally invites their haunting presence, leaving the idea of femininity shifting within us like a lingering ghost. My grandmother always says «be careful what you wish for»

Haberdashery SHOW

Exhibition view Haberdashery Show La mercerie, Bruxelles, Belgium

Fuite romanesque 

Exhibition view Fuite Romanesque 
Cité des arts de Paris, France

Installation 2022, corner structure paint in Green Chroma key 240x120cm, fibre glass, resin,
model 34x23cm, cardboard, papers, light, cristals

Fuite romanesque by Sarah Caillard is an installation comprising a translucent dress made of fibreglass and resin that is placed in front of a large corner structure painted in "Chroma Key
Green" (the colour commonly used for greenscreen special effects). Elements filmed or photographed against this backdrop can therefore be isolated and placed elsewhere, thereby changing their scale, location and manipulating the context. The scene dedicated to this process of inlaying images is a scale model of the exhibition space itself, which is placed on a small pedestal. The scale model allows us to look inside at the static scene and imagine the various elements placed within the Chroma Key Green structure coming to life, projected into a dreamlike, uncanny, and cartoonish scenography.
The installation is a reflection on the mechanisms of imagination. It takes a look at how we constantly move back and forth between the real and virtual worlds, sometimes without even realising it. In this virtual scene, the notion of scale becomes confused and the relationship between inside and outside is disturbed as surfaces reveal bodies that are not present. Our gaze becomes the director of a possible narrative, one that allows the elements to unite and the movements to exist.

Sarah Caillard (France) is in residency as part of the Cité internationale des arts "2-12" program.
Thanks to WBI and Centre Wallonie Bruxelles Paris

The temptation to be a fiction

Reinforced concrete, polystyrene 169x56x22cm
Fiberglass, epoxy resin 163x50x 60 cm

Sculpture is a ghost in itself, it is the image of what is no longer there. In “The temptation to be a fiction” a woman’s body is caught in concrete, like a vestige of our contemporary world. It’s the idea of a body, a femininity and the heaviness it implies. It’s also the idea of the classic tradition and the notion of ruin.
The ghost is presence by absence. He terrifies by what he represents no more than by what he is. A transgender being, a paradoxical body. Dive into a state of inter-matter, it symbolizes the duality of existence.
The two stand side by side, Their gestures, however frozen, seem to have transcended time, they become the receptacle of a projection the place of fantasy. Fantasy meant ghost until the 14th century and finally defined a production of the imagination that allows the self to escape reality.
We do not become adults in the world that we knew, child or adolescent, we are seduced by the idea of all who we have been and who we are no longer. The hardest part is finding the presence.
like a ghost we are caught in the meantime it’s also being able to wear seconds skin, to be the same and the other, the temptation to be a fiction.

Night fever

Model 29x29x47cm  
Cardboard, aluminium, epoxy resin, fibre glass, concrete iron, varnish, lamp

vidéo 1min19
https://vimeo.com/469519476/78f401c48b

Night fever 150x47x36cm  
Reinforced concrete, steal, paint, resin

The model of a nightclub becomes the set for a video in which a character in flesh shares a dance with a ghost created from resin and fiber glass.

Line up

model 50x30x40cm
feather board, polystyrene, fabric, velvet, paper, concrete iron, varnish, lamp 
Psyche
reflective fabric, foam,160cm
S.
reinforced concrete, pigment, corboleum 183x53x36cm
L’attente
reinforced concrete, polystyrene 169x56x22cm 
Ghost
Fiberglass, epoxy resin 163x50x 60 cm
Nabilla
jesmonite, fibreglass, pigment, carboleum, paint, epoxy resin 
156x67x36cm

This installation presents the different figures that populate Sarah's work. The different materials and techniques are used to embody their allegorical relationship: concrete is used to create bodies/architectures evoking a certain gravity. Resin and fibreglass represent ghostly presences. The retro-reflective fabric confronts us with a phenomenon of vision where the forms are perceptible through the light that the properties of this fabric allow to project.