“FOR ME IT’S ABOUT
REALLY GREAT SEX.
THAT ‘YES!’ AT THE
SAME TIME, EVEN
AT THE POINT THAT
I THINK I’M REALLY
CONNECTED,
THE OTHER PERSON
MIGHT BE THINKING
ABOUT WASHING UP”
right: Lust False Empathy (detail), 2006,
organza, leather, wire, feather, in three sections, dimensions variable
facing page: Lust False Empathy, 2006,
organza, leather, wire, feather, in three sections, dimensions variable
SHE DOESN’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT TOO MUCH in case it scares completely out of the window.” What she has now emerged with, seen
you off, but Cathy De Monchaux is into working magic. Considering first at last year’s Printemps de Septembre, in Toulouse, France, and
an African fetish carving in her studio, something she refers to as a followed up this month with a solo show at Fred, London, is a radical
devotional object, she says, “I think especially in relation to art, ‘magic’ rethinking of her style. Gone are the hard metal restraints, the binding
is so interesting, because it’s the bit that’s left. The bit that we don’t of fabric, the palette of rusted locks and chalk-dusted material, and the
really get… I think how artists arrive at that is about an alchemy of things, hard lines of repeated patterns. In its place she presents an abstract
an alchemy of experience, which can sometimes get very muddy.” haze of twisted wire and obscuring figurative elements, the hues muted
Throughout the 1990s, when De Monchaux was one of the most by an all-encompassing minimalist layer of matt white gesso.
visible artists working in the UK, with a lauded show at the Whitechapel Lust False Empathy (2006), a sculpture that will be shown at Fred,
Art Gallery in 1997, a Turner Prize nomination in 1998 and a series of seemingly sprouts from the white of her studio walls. From a distance
museum shows in Europe, this manifested itself in sculptures that were there are three large circular abstract masses of wire with indistinct
animated by the fluid, transformative zone generated between two parameters, displayed in a manner recalling a traditional Christian
poles. triptych. Move in closer, however, and these become representational:
Works oscillating in the grey area between exuberance and a centre point of leather blossoms in labia-like folds, while the riot of
restraint, death and desire, indulgence and pain, involved ruches of chaotic surface detail suggests decadence in its original sense: excess
leather held in place by ornate, gothic metal clamps or set against and decay. As the title implies, De Monchaux partly conceived the work
the oppressive presence of lead slabs. Such definitive pairings were as dealing with the problems of human connection: “For me it’s about
presented only to be thrown into turmoil, raising questions about what really great sex. That yes! At the same time, even at the point that I
happens when opposites come together, when we attempt to interact think I’m really connected, the other person might be thinking about
with the ‘other’ and with the in-between place where one thing can spill washing up.” As such, these giant disembodied genitalia that look
over into its reverse, creating uncertainty – an aspect of that ‘muddy’ simultaneously human and alien encapsulate our desire to overcome
area – and anxiety. “My work is about emotional angst,” she states. our sense of alienation from what is the ‘other’ through synthesis, sexual
In 2002 De Monchaux retreated to her studio “to stare at the or otherwise; and the impossibility of ever truly attaining this goal.
walls a bit. It’s almost like looking at the Burning Bush,” she recalls. “You For De Monchaux making art is also part of an attempt to
forget all your mannerisms, all your rules, the way I thought I worked and connect. “The only point of making work for me”, she says, “is that
the way I thought that my work has haunted me. All those things went other people see it.” She takes what she acknowledges as a Romantic
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