Laura Lamiel began working with enamelled steel modules in 1985. Her interest lies in the possibilities offered by small size white bricks (15 x 33 x 4 cm), which she piles up or stands against walls. She uses these elements to explore monochromatic composition and research alternatives to minimalist structures. In the 90s, she combined these bricks with different materials and shapes, such as rolls of carpet, synthetic furs, used gloves, and ribbons. While industrially manufactured, these everyday objects stand out from their original inherent seriality in that they reflect life stories. Their worn-out aspect brings the neutrality of the plain module back to life. The works thus produced act as interferences that introduce doubt and affect the mind. The artist then moved on from soft, malleable objects (rubber, silicone, ribbon) to more rigid and fixed elements (shopping carts, chairs), arranging them into installations combining public space implements with geometrically shaped artistic objects. Lamiel captured these short-lived installations in black and white or colour photographs with slight variations from grey to yellow, yet always giving prominence to white. These photographs, however, do not merely constitute a documentary process. Their framing, frontal point of view and stripped-back aesthetic perfectly match her visual project and generate a distance that sublimates the static and silent dimension of the elements she arranges on the floor of her studio. For her 1999 solo exhibition in Le Crestet, near Vaison-la-Romaine, she used large enamelled metal panels as partitions to construct three-sided spaces, in which she placed the objects that are now part of her standard vocabulary. Through these architectures, she proposes reflections on the contradiction between the notions of interior and exterior, between open and closed. On the one hand, the artist creates the conditions of the work’s fusion with its location, and on the other, of its isolation, its protected, enclosed space within the world.
Annalisa RIMMAUDO
See this illustrated text on the website of the Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions
