The structures patiently assembled by Manuèle Bernardi follow the same logic. From the fragment – flower peduncle, seed, petal, pine needle, etc. – she extracts the poetic juices, sublimating them by combining them with other identical or different fragments. She thus composes incredible nebulas with tiny mechanisms, whose cloudy and organic forms undulate in the transparencies of plexiglass.
Each element is carefully gleaned, fixed in resin, then riveted by tenuous nylon threads, an invisible interweaving of gossamer threads that make it appear weightless, free as if caught in a stationary flight. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” wrote Confucius. Manuèle Bernardi sublimates with mastery the addition of the entities she has collected.
From these unique and hypnotic creations emanates an aesthetic amazement similar to that which one can feel in front of the flights of starlings. The sensation of being in front of a mechanism governed by secret impulses. There is in this atypical sculpture a kind of sensory fluid that emerges from these dozens of fragments carefully assembled. One hears the rustle of the number, a little music of the infinitely small reaching the higher dimension.
This sculpture enchants with its bewitching forms, each time renewed. Circular, oblong, oval, elliptical. Indefinable. Combining elements with variable shades. Each nestled in its plexiglass case, offering the possibility of being viewed from all sides.
One sometimes guesses the contours of a flower, a constellation, some underwater animal. Everyone’s imagination is sharpened by contact with these lively works. In front of this sculpture that avoids repetition like the plague, the gaze enjoys constantly changing scale, diving into the heart of the matter, then extricating itself to better consider it. A jubilant back and forth.
