“Designer, ex-
Illustrator, no -
Artist, perhaps -
Critic, certainly – ”
From the tip of Clo’e’s pen comes not only a line in vision but a line in thought.
It is often upheld that the art of drawing is a matter of acquiring a stance; whether that be a technical exactitude, a doodled indolence, or a physical expressiveness. Drawing does not relate a fixed reality in a given moment, but records the unfolding of an event, delineating the points of contact between the moving hand, the intuitive eye, and the impassive piece of paper. It is in the playful drawings of Clo’e Floirat, however, that such an encounter – typical of the draftsman – is thrown wide open. Split-Line-Crit: she merges both word and image to design her ‘critical drawings.’ Using the same tool for two modes of expression, the pen both to write and to draw, hers is a uniquely nibbed criticism.
Here considered as separate sequences of critical concern are Clo’e’s reflections on five discrete themes; observational appraisals of Monumenta at the Grand Palais, keen vivisections of the Berlin design scene, satirical prods at London’s recent Olympic architecture, pensive speculations on the iconoclasm of the ‘Empty-Quarter-Museum’ architecture in the UAE, and furtive glances at the spectacular architecture that daily pops into existence. While she may critique, taking both the aesthetic and conceptual elements of architecture and installation to task, there is a sensitivity in her slight use of line. Deployed with a concrete lyricism, both word and image form discretely penned condensations of thought. Clo’e’s drawings are never one-sided; drawing, by its very nature, always maintains some relation to the provisional and unfinished, and as such belies its many multiple marked possibilities. Each drawing is therefore a moment of movement in meaning, equally at home in the temporal print of the newspaper as elegantly framed within their series.
Line is vital to Clo’e’s ‘critical drawings.’ It may be lucid, firmly inked in bold black pen, but her critical eye is always cast askance. She does not draw to acquire a ‘stance,’ but she draws to adopt a line of inquiry. Her lines are tentative and precise, incrementally angled to better understand the form set before her, and her handwritten captions are as pithy as their imagistic counterparts; Kapoor’s controversial ‘Orbit Tower’ becomes an ‘Awful-Tower’ of tangled Eiffel Tower proportions, the arcs of Bernar Venet’s Versailles installation form mischievous ‘parenthèses,’ the Operahuset in Oslo becomes an iceberg play-park for penguins. This is the critical game at work in Clo’e’s drawings; she wits the sovereignty of the spectacle.
This piece was written to accompany the exhibition of Clo’e Floirat’s ‘critical drawings’ at Colette Gallery, Paris, from 16 July to 1 September
http://www.colette.fr/#/page/6282/clo-e-floirat/