Me You or the Other Person Exhibition

A review by Art and Science writer Johanna Kieniewicz 
Pascale Pollier – The body physical

Pascale Pollier, Female Écorché, 2009, mixed media. Image courtesy of the artist and GV Art gallery, London


The physical aspects of the body are, indeed, the most obvious and most immediately conducive to sculpture and portraiture—but it is a rare artist who can make us feel them. It’s not just about skill in re-representing what we see in the mirror, it’s about what’s beneath the surface of the skin. Female Ecorche by Pascale Pollier is an unusual self-portrait, one that – literally – penetrates beneath the skin, with the muscles of the body exposed in exquisite detail. In the sculpture, headphones are set on the ears but the wire is connected to the heart; it seems to inhabit that inner world we experience when in contemplation, or just trying to block out the external world on the Tube. Pollier’s Day of the Lipids was moving in an entirely different way: dealing with plastic surgery in Western culture, liposuction needles are connected to a network of tubes pumping something resembling blood. It is a visceral installation that makes us feel the body through seeing it. The experience isn’t entirely pleasant, but then neither are our bodies, necessarily, when it comes down to it.

---