Cindy Phenix\u2019s recent works combine painting, pastel, and pencil with a plurality of material elements, consolidating the sensoriality already displayed in earlier canvases. Using textile, ceramic, gold leaf, paper, wood, and plywood, Phenix creates singular alliances between techniques, giving rise to a playful chaos that renders obsolete the very notion of categorization, instead urging the creation of sensitive and open relationships among materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Particles of Abnormality<\/em> series, Phenix composes a labyrinth in which creatures with mutating bodies and golden landscapes are standing on large-scale panels. Coexisting in this more-than-natural world, monsters evolve alongside flowers delicately cut out of gold leaf. Brought to life through the interplay of positive and negative space, the fragmented compositions of Particles of Abnormality <\/em>disregard the limitations of two-dimensionality as they proliferate within the installation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monsters also feature in the Tainted with Strangeness<\/em> series, manifesting as crossbreeds between textile, canvas, and painting. Birds, plants, and insects merge to form rhizomatic structures that digress from anthropocentric connections. The multi-bodied, textured beings embody familiar relationships, with bonds of kinship flourishing not only among the various figures they contain but also between the works themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both series express a form of coexistence\u2014the creatures emerge through the cumulation of pictorial gestures or the juxtaposition of textile; the plants and flowers materialize through openings cut into the metallic surface \u2014 that exemplifies the artist\u2019s own collage process, based on an existential reciprocity between abstraction and figuration. Phenix is inspired here by horror film stereotypes (the witch, the castrat- ing femme fatale, and so on), which she overturns to restore agency to the monster-woman. The artist\u2019s chimeras are not contained by their environment; instead, they embody both the object and support of their own desire, not conforming with any rules. Taking shape by themselves through the overlap of forms, colours, and textures, these monstrous figures become icons of power to whom we can turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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