AA
AN ARTWORK
Corentin Grossmann, Yoga 1 et 2, 2016
Corentin Grossmann, Yoga 1 et 2, ceramic, engobe, 25 5/8 x 17 3/4 x 11 in. and 24 3/4 17 3/8 x 11 in.

Yoga 1 and 2 is as a couple of small sculptures performing a yoga posture (asana) opening the rib cage towards the sky. Various possibilities of staging are added to the improbable meeting of yoga and pre-Columbian arts offered by the small colored shorts (removable “yoga pants”). These “statuettes” are characteristic of Grossmann’s taste for inaccuracy that allows him to bypass categories.

“If categories are essential to language and communication, I am constantly trying to dissolve them in my work. The paradox is that I need to refer to archetypes in order to disrupt them. I conceive the work as a tension. I never document myself or make preparatory sketches. Everything happens at the moment of réalisation with the accidents and wanderings that this induces…”

“What I have seen, understood or misunderstood, retained and forgotten is at stake when I create. By experimenting with these mechanisms of memory and intuition, I discover new forms or find others.” – Corentin Grossmann

These statuettes address, not without humor, the issue of nudity and the representation of genitalia in statuary. Here clearly detailed, the penis and vulva contrast with the anatomical approximation of the bodies. The possibility of hiding the sexes by means of small yoga pants, reinforces the paradox and introduces the crucial question of modesty, like an ultimate hesitation between the opening and the abandonment which the yogic posture evokes and the recall of often constraining societal standards.