A FRESCO, Beneath the Skin of Élisabeth Leverrier
In this book, the artist invites readers to explore the creative journey that has driven her since 1985. Supported by texts, archival photographs of ephemeral installations, and captured moments from performances, the book reveals a creative process that engages in dialogue between dance, theater, cinema, and photography.
Naturally, like a dancer teetering on the edge of ritual, Élisabeth Leverrier emerges with her a fresco approach, centered on the verbal energy of vacant spaces. The artist strives to transfer this energy through a body that becomes an instrument, merging with the charred pieces of beechwood she uses as brushes. Capturing waves of vanished energy, reaching and rising to the picture rails—like blank sheets suspended in space—she traces a graphic memory of the resonance of place. Surfaces and floors become covered in abstract lines, yet these lines do not detach themselves from the gesture that brought them into being. To fully accompany this visual descent into the A fresco project, the book offers, through a QR code, a sonic immersion into her work. The reader then moves through the artist’s spatial interventions to the rhythm of the markings, to the sound of charred wood being crushed and leaving its imprint. The stroke—at times heavy, thick—sometimes begins to breathe, becoming light, almost absent. It outlines a boundary, tears through space, and makes it vibrate, restoring to spaces—and to our imagination—a lost energy.
Another facet of her work, Élisabeth Leverrier’s Oscillators—ash paintings—are like endless horizon lines in constant variation. With fire as the origin of creation, contrasts and tones engage with perception and invite contemplation, like landscapes vibrating from sky to earth.
Tracing twenty years of the artist’s life, A fresco is a book of memory that speaks of birth—of a gesture, a rekindled fire, of drawings set in place that become frescoes."
Marion Cazy
livre/échange
November 2017
Centre Régional des Lettres de Basse-Normandie