"In 1641 architect-artist Gianlorenzo Bernini unveiled the first of two bell towers at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Two months later, cracks appeared in the foundation. When the damage spread to the main church facade, Bernini faced a choice: Keep going or tear the whole thing down and eat the loss? French artist Marie Aimee Fattouche contemplates a similar question with anthropomorphic metal sculptures that walk a fine line between minor dysfunction and total breakdown.
Conceptually, Fattouche’s sculptures hinge on what she calls “structural mechanics”—whether those mechanics arise from the body, the mind, or the environment. Her bizarre works, crafted with sheets of metal, plaster, and joint mechanisms, look like they might come crawling out of a mad scientist’s lab after midnight. With their pastiche of body parts and biomechatronic appendages, Fattouche’s Frankenstein-like creations are more cyborg than mammal or outright monster.
Using what writer and philosopher Robert M. Pirsig calls “classical understanding,” Fattouche looks at underlying form and structure to understand the world. “Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos and make the unknown known,” writes Pirsig of classical understanding in his classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. However, Fattouche subverts Pirsig’s idea with work that tries to make sense of the world through systems, laws, and logic—and fails. The result is a delightfully freakish version of our human systems and structures: shattered bodies beyond repair, physical pain, mental circuitry, learned behaviors and thought patterns stuck in an endless loop.
Several years after cracks appeared in Bernini’s bell tower, the project was abandoned and demolished. Whether it could have been saved remains a point of contention. Similarly, Fattouche’s work exists “between repair and improvement, a minor dysfunction to breakdown, a precarious impulse to stability.” Her sculptures look carefully at points of vulnerability in our lives–the cracks in the facade–and asks whether we should, like Bernini, eat our losses or putty, patch, and paint our way into an uncertain future."
Morgan Laurens, art critic
Los Angeles, June 2021
Photographie: Mandrey Photonomy
Marie Aimée Fattouche (b. 1991, Paris, France) lives and works in Seine-Saint-Denis, France.
After completing her MA in Fine Art in 2016 at Chelsea College of Arts in London, Fattouche was granted the Mercers' Arts Award. In 2017, as one of the winning artists of the Red Mansion Art Prize, she was invited to spend one month's residency in Beijing. In 2019, she had the honor of being among the eight artists shortlisted for the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award at the Standpoint Gallery in London (the UK's most significant award for emerging artists working in the field of sculpture). Her work has been exhibited in various institutions, including the Hockney Gallery (2018) and more recently at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint-Étienne as part of the GLOBALISTO exhibition (June to October 2022). In January 2024, she will present her solo exhibition "NOUS INFINIR MON AMOUR" at the Galerie du Haut-Pavé in Paris.
Solo Exhibitions
NOUS INFINIR MON AMOUR
La Galerie du Haut-Pavé
Paris. France
YAANI
Toula Gallery
Online
Collective Exhibitions
GLOBALISTO: UNE PHILOSOPHIE EN MOUVEMENT
Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne (MAMC+)
Saint-Étienne. France
CARE DON’T CARE
Basis Projektraum
Frankfurt. Germany
AIR COMPETITION 2021
The Muse Gallery
London. United-Kingdom
MUSE
Toula Gallery
Online
THREE PILLARS
Chelsea Gallery. Old Town Hall
London. United-Kingdom
ART CAR BOOT FAIR
London. United-Kingdom
HARBINGERS: THE RAPTURE
Harbingers
London. United-Kingdom
PARADISE UNDERGROUND
Sugar Cane
London. United-Kingdom
BATTERY HORIZONS
Hockney Gallery. RCA
London. United-Kingdom
CAST OF MY SHAPE
E1 7TP.
London. United-Kingdom
FORTUNE
Safehouse 1. Maverick Projects
London. United-Kingdom
THE SACRED 419
The Square Gallery
London. United-Kingdom
HOTEL 419
The Muse Gallery.
London. United-Kingdom
UBUNTU
Punctum Gallery.
London. United-Kingdom
BREATH OF BRAHMA
Morgue Gallery.
London. United-Kingdom
ONE
Cookhouse.
London. United-Kingdom
CONVERSATION IN PROGRESS
Mills Centre Gallery.
London. United-Kingdom
FLY BY THE SEAT OF YOUR PANTSUIT
Cookhouse.
London. United-Kingdom
DOING
Chelsea College of Arts.
London. United-Kingdom
Press
L’ART ET LA (DÉ)COLONISATION
Conference
Saint Étienne. France.
LE 1 HEBDO
Video interview (00:02:15)
Saint Étienne. France.
CHINA EXCHANGE
Digital publication
The Red Mansion Foundation publication. Page 271.
London. United-Kingdom
NOT REAL ART
Digital publication.
Q + Art: Fattouche Explores Dysfunction with Bizarre Mechanical Sculptures.
Los Angeles. United-States
Video interview (00:03:35)
Bleu Carbone Production.
Pantin. France.
Digital publication
Issue No.1.
New York. United-States
Digital publication
Chelsea College of Arts blog.
London. United-Kingdom
Awards & Residencies
POT KOMMON
Residency: one week program of collective research
le 6B, Mains d’Oeuvres, Les Poussières, la Villa Mais d’Ici
Saint Denis. France.
WEEK-ENDS DE L’IMPOSSIBLE
Residency: one collaborative research weekend on black hole
Le Théâtre de La Nef
Pantin. France.
AIR COMPETITION 2020-2021
Shortlisted
The Muse Gallery
London. United-Kingdom
MARK TANNER SCULPTURE AWARD
Shortlisted
London. United-Kingdom
RED GATE RESIDENCY
Residency: one month research program
Beijing. China
THE RED MANSION FOUNDATION
Recipient
London. United-Kingdom
MERCERS’ ARTS AWARD
Recipient
London. United-Kingdom
Education
MA FINE ART
Chelsea College of Arts
London. United-Kingdom
FOUNDATION YEAR
Esag Penninghen.
Paris. France.
2024
2021
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2022
2021
2020
2017
2022
2021
2019
2017
2016
2015-2016
2009-2010