THESE ARTISTS WHO HAVE CHOSEN TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES THROUGH UNIQUE MATERIALS
Founded in 2008 by Florence Guillier Bernard, the Maison Parisienne gallery is dedicated to promoting artists who work with materials and possess exceptional French craftsmanship. Among these talented artists who combine perfect technique, an aesthetic eye, and creative audacity, some have chosen textile fibers as their artistic medium. And the results are astonishing! This is evident in the trompe-l'œil works of Simone Pheulpin, the organic sculptures of Aude Franjou, and the embroidered photographs of Aurélie Mathigot. Let's take a closer look at these three women who celebrate both the craft and the textile material itself…
Simone Pheulpin: Metamorphosis of the Fold
For over fifty years, Simone Pheulpin has used her imagination and dexterity to create exceptional textile sculptures. A self-taught artist, she has developed her own technique, a meticulous process of stacking, rolling, and tightening fabric, bordering on a meditative approach. It is this succession of gestures, both precise and spontaneous, that gives birth to these monochrome and spectral sculptures, where the material is unrecognizable. Concealing an armature of intertwined pins, the strips of ecru fabric are transformed into striking organic trompe-l'œil. Behind these singular works, whose irregularities offer surprising effects of light and shadow, it is difficult to recognize the kilometers of raw cotton meticulously folded and pinned by the artist. On the other hand, one is easily surprised to recognize the limestone, shells, coral, bark, ivory, mosses, seafoam, and other fossilized materials that populate nature as much as Simone Pheulpin's subconscious. A play of metamorphoses that creates a singular artistic vocabulary!
APR – Parisian house – Simone Pheulpin – Hector © Antoine Lippens
Aude Franjou: Linen as Ariadne's thread
A graduate in art history and trained in tapestry at the Duperré School of Applied Arts in Paris, Aude Franjou has dedicated herself to sculptural work with linen since 1999. From tapestry, she has retained only the ancestral gesture. Gone are the looms and frame weaving! The artist has chosen to lay the threads directly on the floor to focus her artistic research on plant construction and explore volume and relief creation. In her hands, linen composes organic forms, interlacing, twisting, and distorting with a tentacular appearance. Root, seaweed, vine, coral: each module resembles a growth—or rather, an outgrowth—of plant matter. It's as if nature has reclaimed its territory! Sometimes raw, sometimes colored, her fascinating linen sculptures are the fruit of a meticulous technique that is uniquely her own. Aude Franjou kneads, relaxes, and then restrets this natural fiber using only the strength of her hands and her imagination. Employing the wrapping technique, she encases the raw linen fibers in a finer thread. Twenty times, a hundred times, the same gesture is repeated, despite the vagaries of the weather: intense heat softens the material; cold and humidity stiffen it; the tension petrifies the linen. But it is at this price that the artist gives life to the fullness and delicacy of her unique textile art!
APR – Parisian house – MP15 – Aude Franjou, Embrassade in opera red, 2023 © Vincent Leroux
Aurélie Mathigot: The In-Between Worlds
Textile artist Aurélie Mathigot explores a creative language that combines two artistic disciplines: photography and embroidery. Holding a Master's degree in Art History and Philosophy and a DNSEP (National Higher Diploma in Visual Expression) in photography/video, she furthered her training by taking embroidery classes at the Cours Lesage. This adds another layer of depth to her work with images! Uniquely constructed, her pieces rely on photography, which captures a moment, a reality, an action, and textiles, which amplify, transform, and create illusions. This is exemplified by her series Stolen photos, Composed of photographs of details from paintings by masters, taken in museums, covered with embroidery and large beads! For this is precisely the essence of Aurélie Mathigot's work: in this expression of a new reality, halfway between illusion and metaphor. In her Parisian studio, the designer prints her own photographs onto canvases before embroidering, beading, and crocheting them, both by machine and by hand. Favoring the use of natural fibers, she knots cotton, linen, or silk threads, which she combines with antique beads of glass paste, jet, or coral, salvaged from clothing or found in flea markets. A beautiful way to create depth and textural effects on a surface initially destined to remain eternally flat and smooth…
