Etienne Chambaud Stase, 2022
23 x 18 x 13 cm
The new series of works entitled Stase combines found elements and 3D-printed materials. Taking as point of departure the found objects used to decorate and also to protect religious icons, known as an Oklad or Riza, Chambaud’s works suggest the uncovered surface has projected out through the openings in an amorphous shape. These protrusions are determined by digital simulations of specific organic or mineral growth pattern, using, for example, the rules of growth of certain crystals and plants, tree barks or mushrooms, of animal cells, tissues and organs. Each of the works in the series is the result of an excessive computational and material development out of the void where an icon used to be.
Stase is a further development of the artist’s modified panel paintings, Uncreatures, presented as part of Inexistence in Berlin in 2021, and has a pronounced sculptural quality. The title of the series, Stases, invokes both the French medical term for an edema, vascular congestion, or metastasis and the more abstract sense of the word referring to a state immobility, suspension, or stagnation.