ANNE MERCEDES'S WORKS
ARTIST STATEMENT
The infinity of the universe, recent attempts at mapping dark matter and the ways human beings relate to their own planet - fluctuating between concern and neglect, pleasure and indifference - are at the centre of my thinking. We are caught in different scales of time and space: it is both a thrilling and disquieting perspective which I want to convey visually. I make sculptures that suggest what it would feel like to land on unknown planets or to witness the kinetic beauty of the Earth’s destruction.
I use a large palette of clays and minerals, and the firing is assigned a crucial role: it is expected to disrupt or even destroy that which I have carefully constructed. In building the piece and creating a specific order, I try to anticipate, promote and control the upheaval that the firing can bring. The firing creates movements through the melting of components judiciously arranged, and the final pieces reveal the course of these movements, thus echoing the necessity and chance that participate in evolution.
