ALCHIMIE DES MATÉRIAUX

Keen Souhlal’s work is an invitation to look sharply at the different materials that surround us. The artist uses a wide range of materials: wood, brick, stone, concrete, coal, ceramics. . . which she combines by creating surprising encounters, opposition games: natural – artificial ; light – dense ; rough – soft, precious – ordinary ; opaque-transparent…This process of hybridization of forms and substances gives the sculptures a strange and mysterious character. The strength of Keen Souhlal’s works lies in their ability to bring together periods, gestures, fields… to create bridges between past and present, modernity and tradition, art and crafts.

Balanced tree sections receive in their centre sandstone or cement shapes that weigh them down or pass through them (Pyrophyte), arches or columns of coal rise up and spread out in space (Natural Archives), porcelain leaves take the appearance of crumpled paper (90 grams of fixed idea)…Each element reason in a particular way by summoning different universes and temporalities. The archetypal figures of the tree, of the totem pole, rub shoulders with the contemporary world of concrete.
Read more about Keen Souhlal.