SHELL HAUS

Clara Stengel’s installations show an attention to the world as much as the intimate sphere. A meticulous observation that urges the artist to take possession of the shapes, the objects, the materials that constitute and organize our living spaces. The place of exhibition and the production context influence the artworks of the artist. During a personal exhibition at Bagnoler (artist-run-space located in the suburbs of Paris), a flood in her studio pushed Clara Stengel to exhibit the remains of crinkled drawings and to use as a decor the humidity that invaded the walls. In a reciprocal relation of water that troubles the inside of the studio, the exhibition hall hosts the fragments of the street. Dead leafs and electric cables scramble the distinct status of these everyday spaces. The objects, the street furniture or the interior motifs turn into lexicon. We suddenly realize that their value does not reside in their possible function anymore, sometimes ridiculing the very idea of function. However, all these elements continue to feed a constant stream of memories and past or future instants. We integrated them to our personal universe, they traverse us daily as much as we traverse them. In a game of imitation, translation, association or scale, Clara Stengel feeds micro-fictions, a mirror game creating discursive and poetic tensions between materials and objects, intimate and urban, living space and workplace. The artist’s installations protect us from the disorder of the world as much as they allow us to question our position and our scale within this world.