Artist interview : Mélanie Clénet at Playtime Paris
Mélanie Clénet lives and works in Nantes. A graduate of the Métiers d'Art in costume design and with a background in decorative arts, she has developed an experimental, artistic, and artisanal body of work around cord material, an excursion which started in 2005 when researching textiles while creating costumes for a contemporary circus show.
The development of a singular assembly technique of this material by machine sewing and a few precise gestures allows her to elaborate a register of surfaces and colored, sensitive, and clean volumes. She creates objects and interrogates their form and function, experiments with color and its vibration, matter and its radiation. Surfaces become carpets or tapestries, volumes are turned into containers, suspensions, or sculptures. These sewn works are made with functional, day-to-day use in mind, to play a part in the decoration of a space, or simply exist as artistic creations. Each piece is unique, made artisanally in her workshop.
Above the Renew space, Mélanie balanced 3 large suspended mural pieces which invited calm and soft observation.
Here's a short video where she's sharing her inspiration, technique and future projects (in French!).
