'Bliss' by Ellande Jaureguiberry at A.ROMY, Geneva

Ellande Jaureguiberry kneads with the same appetite the substances of ceramics and drawing. His fingers mold soil or paper, aiming at the production of delectable homogeneous dough. Brushed clay, shaded pencil lead, create smooth surfaces, despite the violent irruptions that sometimes puncture them. His volumes – soft without being flabby – always bear marks, deliberate bruises that excite their superficiality, their skin made more sensitive by dexterous mutilations. For the flesh might seem languid, without such delicate acupuncture to systematically vivify it. Piercings, incense sticks, blades of grass or marshmallow skewers are among the motifs of this visual corrida, cutting the unctuous muscles of the watercolors. They massage and penetrate. Embracing A. ROMY's domestic configuration, the artist avoids cluttering and encumbering. There are small things, for once. A dozen images accompany the ceramics that go a little on the ground, a little on the wall. The enamels do not express color so much as texture, white, opaque, matt. The graphic compositions' pastel color range is livened up by delicate touches, tiny objects that have landed on it. The work engages the monumental... well, actually no. That's it. There is a little of everything. This thing that, that, that. And so within an oeuvre of great stability, the artist allows contradiction. Sophistication can derail. And the suppleness of the execution finds itself, here and there, like slapped by a stuttering that re-balances everything. Clinical dirtying up harmonizes therapeutic landscapes of reliefs that are both geographical and physiological, running over hill and membrane. All evoke synthetic horizons, territories of tenderness where beatitude reigns over lesions. A nirvana.

— Joël Riff