Wednesday, March 16th
by Editor, Soiled and Seeded

Flowers Excess

Designer Victoire de Castellane's latest exhibtion:
"Fleurs d'Excès"
Gagosian Gallery, Paris

From the press release:
With Fleurs d’Excès, de Castellane has gone further to create ten works that recall the jeweled obsessions of times past, such as the mechanical nightingale of Hans Christian Andersen’s children’s tale, Fabergé eggs, and the fabulous “bestiaries” of animals real and mythic. De Castellane’s intricately made hybrids each contain a wearable element, becoming “jewelry at rest, waiting to be worn.”

Indifferent to convention though passionate about history and technical challenge, de Castellane’s ideas are driven by an exuberant imagination, deriving from sources as diverse as the élan vital of the natural world and the synthetic wonders of Technicolor; the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney; voluptuous Hollywood screen idols and manga characters; the trash and fizz of pop culture and the darkest depths of the subconscious.

Hallucinatory drugs and their promise of mind-expansion have fascinated and inspired artists the world over. De Castellane’s flowers are intoxicating, but also dangerous because of the poisons that they secrete. Here they personify the Romantic idea of women “under the influence” in a compendium of phantasmagorical specimens with faux-classificatory names, such as Heroïna Romanticam Dolorosa and Crystalucinae Metha Agressiva.

De Castellane uses materials like no one before her, choosing precious stones for their unorthodox beauty and form, as well as how they relate to specific narratives. She prefers them rough or free-shaped, as they occur in nature. Mountings cast in solid silver, according to classical tradition, are disguised using a lacquering technique that renders them in alien hues and textures....

Source: Gagosian Gallery

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