Didi-Huberman considers moulding an exemplary case of \u201ctechnical survival.\u201d The cover of L\u2019empreinte<\/em>\u2019s exhibition catalogue in a sense encapsulates its anthropological conception and evokes a certain form of romanticism: the imprint of a hand, that of the great Picasso,2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - A reproduction of Pablo Picasso\u2019s Main droite de Picasso<\/em> (1937).<\/span> a choice evocative of Modernist aesthetic ideals. The hand of the creator incarnates the human body\u2019s original contact with material, constituting a fundamental gesture of technical mediation. The image thus recalls the mythic origin of (non-mimetic) resemblance, through the (almost) direct transfer from one form into another.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - I am referring to the mythic origin of painting, as told by Pliny the Elder: a young woman traces the shadow cast by her lover on the wall. Moreover, the non-mimetic nature of human likeness recalls the wax funerary effigies of antiquity, which Pliny also dealt with.<\/span> Moreover, it expresses man\u2019s equally mythical desire to leave behind a permanent trace of his existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That being said, for Didi-Huberman, moulding is a question that touches all the material and symbolic operations of the hand. Countering the idea that this artisanal technique lacks artistic inventiveness, the art historian defines its aesthetic value from a procedural point of view. The procedure expresses the heuristic dimension and theoretical value of the operations involved in the art of moulding, while every formal choice becomes a particular \u201cworking hypothesis.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Georges Didi-Huberman, op. Cit., 91. (Our translation.)<\/span> Didi-Huberman takes up Andr\u00e9 Leroi-Gourhan\u2019s reflections on the process of \u201chominization\u201d and proposes his own analysis of the anthropological ramifications of the imprint: \u201cThe technical gesture, the concern for genealogy, the power images have to touch<\/em> us, the invention of a memory of forms, the cruel game of desire and bereavement\u2009\u2014\u2009all of it having a threefold contact<\/em>, in turn joyous and painful, with matter, with the flesh, and with disappearance.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Ibid., 11.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n One notes that this approach is inflected by a melancholic vision of artistic modernity. Marked by the mortuary genesis of moulding, the first uses of which go back to the death mask, the prevailing anthropological paradigm has a predilection for objects and discourse informed by mourning, memory, and loss. Supporting Didi-Huberman\u2019s historical perspective is the predominance of corporeal motifs, of which the tactile imprint is the prototype. Yet it is precisely these two aspects associated with the moulding process that seem to call into question certain current artistic practices: the implicit reference to death and the exemplary reference to the human body, with the anthropological paradigm being a vehicle for gender issues that must be taken into consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Critical response to the work of Rachel Whiteread goes to the crux of this theoretical issue.6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - For an example of a Didi-Hubermanian reading of Whiteread\u2019s production, see Ma\u00eft\u00e9 Vissault, \u201cVue de l\u2019int\u00e9rieur,\u201d ETC<\/em>, no. 57 (2002): 74-76.<\/span> Since the 1980s, the British sculptor has cast everyday objects and familiar domestic settings while playing on the relationships between negative and positive, foreground and background, presence and absence, inner and outer, etc. She was also one of the few female artists included in L\u2019empreinte<\/em>. Of the hundred or so artists featured in the exhibition, only fourteen are women, and the entries for many of them were not even illustrated in the catalogue. The works selected, moreover, reinforce the anthropological paradigm by giving prime importance to the motif of the cast body (in the works of Louise Bourgeois and Kiki Smith, for instance). David Batchelor has rightly criticized the preponderance of the themes of death and commemoration in the interpretation of Whiteread\u2019s production. Such an interpretation is not misplaced, he says, but it is restrictive: \u201cThe focus on the melancholic and the memorial threatens to block off other avenues of expression, to monopolize the production and circulation of meaning around the work.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - David Batchelor, \u201cRachel Whiteread. Liverpool and Madrid,\u201d The Burlington Magazine<\/em>, vol. 138, no. 1125 (December 1996): 838.<\/span> From a like-minded feminist perspective, Lisa Tickner situates the question of Whiteread\u2019s moulding as an anti-idealistic technical choice that eludes conventional \u00ad(predominantly male) aesthetic pretensions through inventive and contradictory formal strategies, which the critical emphasis on funerary imagery partly obscures.8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Lisa Tickner, \u201cMediating Generation: The mother-daughter plot,\u201d Art History<\/em>, vol. 25, no. 1, 31-35.<\/span> Correlated with this, Whiteread\u2019s recent sculptures have set aside the monumental to develop a more prosaic vision of the world and the objects inhabiting it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A similar trend is evident in contemporary art in Qu\u00e9bec. Among female artists, sculptor Val\u00e9rie Blass is an interesting case, not just for the singularity of her work, but because it, too, has been discussed in connection with Didi-Huberman\u2019s thought on the imprint\u2009\u2014\u2009here envisaged from a procedural rather than a melancholic point of view.9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Jean-Ernest Joos, \u201cLe poids de l\u2019infigurable : \u00e0 propos du travail de Val\u00e9rie Blass,\u201d esse<\/em>, no. 55 (Fall 2005): 54-55.<\/span> Questions of otherness, of the uncanny, of the unarguable are thus woven into a complex discourse on the experience of these works, where po\u00efesis<\/em> (the making) is apprehended through the spectator\u2019s somatic reception. Blass\u2019s sculptural approach is characterized by varied hybridization, as much on the level of forms, surfaces, and materials as on that of the techniques and gestures involved in conceiving the objects. Her use of moulding is incorporated into experimentations with modelling and assemblage, particularly evident in such dual compositions as Compression et expansion en noir<\/em>, \u00c9l\u00e9phant en vert et noir<\/em>, and Damien en gris et rose<\/em>, all from 2005. The first has the aspect of an irregular cone made of textured packing foam, the top of which was replicated and placed on a pedestal next to the original form. Here, proximity reveals a play of equivalences and differentiation that provokes a degree of uncertainty about how the work was constructed. This aspect of Blass\u2019s work attenuates the referential significance of moulding, as a specific technique as much as an archaic gesture, while introducing a playful dimension into its reception that lightens the affective horizon in the prevailing discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although moulding is now a mainstay in the repertoire of many artists\u2019 technical resources, few make it their prime or exclusive focus, which is a good reason to take a closer look at the practice of emerging artist Chlo\u00e9 Desjardins, whose work focuses on the paradoxical qualities of moulding. Twice exhibited at the Parisian Laundry in 2011,10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - Collision 7<\/em>, from March 18 to April 9, 2011, and Summertime in Paris<\/em>, from June 23 to August 6, 2011.<\/span> her works explore the assumed \u201creskilling\u201d adjustments related to this technique. Manoeuvrability lies at the heart of Desjardins\u2019s reflections, though she is much more concerned with the construction and deconstruction of the objects\u2019 identities than with the forms of life and death inscribed in their organic structures\u2009\u2014\u2009which immediately connects her to Blass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Desjardins\u2019s work relies on various strategies for heightening opacity as it pertains to the materiality and construction of the works and to the devices that mediate their relationship with the spectator. Her pieces are created from familiar objects, ordinary, industrial products such as packaging and dishes that she variously transforms and stages. She then submits them to a series of mediations that lend them a density of process that complicates immediate apprehension: transfers between materials, fragmentation, re-composition, replication, and so on. Moulding is the step in this process that sets the physical object in a state of indecision, manifesting itself as a mystery or question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The artist skillfully skirts archaeological and mythical questions by taking a different approach to the practical business\u2009\u2014\u2009la cuisine<\/em>\u2009\u2014\u2009of casting objects whose particular ambiguity results from minimal formal invention combined with great technical proficiency. Through repetition, the moulding creates variations and temporal gaps that often evoke traces, absences, and disappearances. Desjardins emphasizes the spatial articulations between forms and materials, doing so with unsentimental humour. Her most recent project, Relief<\/em>, is the most successful at giving concrete expression to her approach. The work consists of a somewhat undefined volume of white plaster-like Hydrocal cement. The unique volume was produced by means of a silicone cast of the original form, a metallic structure covered in bubble wrap, evocative of a sculpture wrapped for shipping. Simulating the conventions of a museum presentation, the object was placed on a wood pedestal, endowing it with the status of art object.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through these numerous manipulations of the object, Desjardins counters the reductive concept of moulding as a direct mechanical action enabling the production of countless versions of the same model. Reversing this logic, Relief<\/em> presents itself as the sole instance of a chain of physical gestures and contacts. Moreover, the objects and materials favoured by the artist have a special relationship with handling: the plastic wrap is used here as an interface, as an element that conditions the prehension of other objects. The fictional wrapping of a sculpture thus appears to hint at the precious nature of the hidden object, available to us exclusively through its physical accoutrement: the plastic wrapping\u2009\u2014\u2009a material that further testifies to the industrialization of the practice of moulding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Worth highlighting are the recurring motifs of covering and wrapping. One finds them in Whiteread, who recently cast a series of disparate objects, including pieces of polystyrene wrapping, cardboard boxes, and other scraps. In contrast, Blass\u2019s Cette jeune femme ne sait pas s\u2019habiller<\/em> and For r\u00eaveur<\/em> (2008) are quasi-abstract works that conceal the reference to the female body under layers of solid drapery of indeterminate material. Interesting here is that For r\u00eaveur<\/em> is a modified cast of Une fois de trop<\/em> (2008), a girl\u2019s body carrying a kind of black mesh lampshade on her head.11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Jake Moore, \u201cRegardez ce que je pense et vous verrez ce que je ressens : cr\u00e9ation et sculpture chez Val\u00e9rie Blass,\u201d Val\u00e9rie Blass<\/em> (Montr\u00e9al: Parisian Laundry, 2009), 32.<\/span> These resonances between sculptures also orient Desjardins toward the logical impossibilities and perceptual deviations that her castings induce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Relief<\/em> is the physical incarnation of a repetitive form in the artist\u2019s vocabulary, produced in a variety of formats and materials, i.e., different types of plaster and coloured wax. Her construction process involves shifts in function, context, and materiality. First, the conception of the cast object removes its banal utilitarian plastic value by giving it a new identity, that of a hypothetical artwork, with all the signs of its handling: folds and bulges, traces of fingerprints, adhesive tape holding it down, etc. The relationship between container and content is instantly blurred. Further developing this transposition is the physical and visual densification of the plastic wrap, which is transformed from being supple, light, and translucent into a hard, compact material. The solidification of the bubble wrap has the effect of modifying the rapport we usually have with the material: it imposes a prohibition on our touching the work and our childish desire to pop the air bubbles one after another, an inclination further evinced in Desjardins\u2019 frequent use of Plexiglas bells to protect her sculptures, a device that functions as an obstacle to the viewer\u2019s tactile impulse and scopic drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a material level, Desjardins\u2019s objects, like those of Blass, explore various states of indeterminacy. And while they play on dissimulation, they also reveal the fragility and duplicability of random forms, reactivating an ambivalence peculiar to moulding through a subtle play on the hand that disrupts the paradigm of the imprint, as featured on the cover of Didi-Huberman\u2019s book. In seeking to foil the observer, these artists are foiling the more primal fantasy of contact and loss born of technical practice. If the overtones of melancholia in critical and theoretical discourse are now dissipating, the process of moulding, for its part, has preserved its immense heuristic value, that of producing ever singular \u201cworking hypotheses\u201d from a practice open to disjunctions and paradoxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translated from the French by Ron Ross<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/74_DO03_Chagnon_Whiteread_Left-scaled.jpg\")
Left<\/em>, 2005.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Luhring Augustine, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Rachel-Whiteread\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/74-IM_Whiteread_DRILL.jpg\")
Drill<\/em>, 2008.
Photo: Mike Bruce, courtesy of the artist & Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/74_DO03_Chagnon_Whiteread_Blue_and_Yellow.png\")
Untitled (Blue and Yellow)<\/em>, 1999.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Luhring Augustine, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/74_DO03_Chagnon_Whiteread_Study-scaled.jpg\")
Study<\/em>, 2005.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Luhring Augustine, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/74_DO03_Chagnon_Desjardins_Indice.jpg\")
Indice<\/em>, 2011.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/74_DO03_Chagnon_Desjardins_Relief-scaled.jpg\")
Relief<\/em>, 2011.
Photo: Guy L\u2019Heureux, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/74_DO03_Chagnon_Blass_Compression-et-expansion-en-noir.jpg\")
Compression et expansion en noir, <\/em>2005.
Photo: \u00a9 Richard-Max Tremblay \/ SODRAC (2011), courtesy of Parisian Laundry, Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n