Laurence Le Constant

Themis Sculpture in Feathers, Mythological Hybrid Figure, Contemporary, Signed

2019

After obtaining a degree in fashion design, Laurence began art studies specialized in textile design and then developed skills as an embroiderer, weaver and feather-worker. The ancestral gestures were patiently passed on to her in the workshop. She later chose a course combining visual arts at the Sorbonne with classes at the School of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. ​ From 2000, she gained experience in prestigious haute couture workshops as Chanel, Dior, etc. In 2010 she decided to devote herself entirely to her own work and finally allowed herself to show a body of work that was just waiting to be seen. ​ She has participated in several group exhibitions in Paris, Tokyo, Osaka, Dallas and San Francisco. The work MICHELINE (from the series MY LOVELY BONES) joined the permanent collection of the Dallas Museum of Art in 2012. ​ A noteworthy selection of her Vanitas (from the MY LOVELY BONES series) was shown at the Art Paris Art Fair 2014 and 2015. In 2014, the Geraldine Banier Gallery devoted a solo exhibition to her work: “HER GARDEN”. The work of Laurence Le Constant sketches out the contours of a bewitching world, populated by singular hybrid figures. Childhood fantasies are revived, lulled by cosmic legends and tales from which she borrows many references. Both figurative and dreamlike scenes are presented in a multifaceted way. Situated in this vaporous gap between the imaginary and the real, the pieces created open onto essential metaphysical and identity questions. The use of noble materials, precious wood, crystals, feathers, coral and fossilized animal teeth, keeps the symbolic power intact. If the visual appeal operates immediately, the works only reveal their ambivalent secret in a second phase, when the visual pleasure has passed. The artist draws on the rich heritage of her training as a cabinetmaker, upholsterer, embroiderer and feather-worker to offer her meandering introspective and her haunting memories with delicate and poetic contours. In the series My lovely bones, the artist becomes an archaeologist of memory. First-named Dove, Tina and Maria, her vanitas are portraits of prominent women from near and far, echoing her personal genealogy. Each piece is unique and requires hundreds of hours of work. The carefully selected feathers, are glued one by one on a resin base. Halfway between funerary outsider art and haute couture, the artist sculpts feather like one would weave a cocoon. Incantatory gestures, hypnotic technique, behind the symbols loaded with anxiety, she tries to ward off oblivion. This theme, offering a range of precious relics, oscillates between the most delicate and the emergence of the most archaic and is inspired by La Loba, a Mexican tale where the Wolf-Woman picks up bones belonging to animals in the desert, so that they are not lost to the world. The purpose is to preserve what remains of those that shape us and thus avoid their actual disappearance. These are figureheads that punctuate her personal history. The given name eventually being the last ceremonial remembrance.