Is it really dolls that we encounter in Michel Nedjar’s
“poupées”, can we describe these forms as sculptures, and don’t
they quite obviously look like mysterious fetishes? Each of these
descriptions seems plausible up to a point. Yet, ultimately, they do
not get to the heart, let alone summarise the character of these pieces
that are bundled and laced together out of rags and partially covered
in mud, since as sculptures they are far too amorphous. We can hardly
imagine them functioning as dolls; after all, as fetishes they would
need a shaman who would rouse their magical powers.
There is no doubt that these works, which do not fit in with our
typical notion of dolls, are fascinating. Is this due to the alienness
of the “poupées”, which, with its determining, almost
penetrating explicitness, is their most prominent characteristic?
Rarely has a human replica been shaped in a more elemental way and
visualised more primordially, as though going back to its very physical
roots. Michel Nedjar offers those who observe his creations hardly any
hint as to how they could possibly identify with them; on the contrary,
he not only accepts but deliberately intends that his figures have an
irritating effect. The basis for this is his choice and treatment of
materials, and his sculptural handling of them. Both aspects are
closely interdependent on each other as components of the effect that
the pieces create.
The way in which the scraps of material, literally impregnated with
experience of life and its processes, are compressed, layered, torn
apart and laced together again, brings their quality as rags into the
foreground, yet this is not all. Michel Nedjar has transformed them so
much, made them precious, and given them, as it were, an aura that is
both individual and yet removed from reality.
Whereas in some pieces the artist’s attention is focused on suggesting
allusions to bodies or even rudimentary physiognomies, in other overtly
apparent creative measures we can recognise an attempt to prevent the
observing having an overly representative view of the figures.
Michel Nedjar works with ambivalence, with mystery. Consequently in his
dolls, so adorably beautiful in their bizarreness, we ultimately
encounter chimeras, illusory bodies wrapped in rags from a sphere of
the imagination which decidedly prefers the experienceable nature of
inner appearance to that of the visible world.
(This text © Andreas Franzke "Doll Chimeras" was published in the
catalogue 8. Triennale Kleinplastik Fellbach 2001 Vor-sicht
Rück-Sicht.)
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