From pacifiers to condoms, latex provides a protective membrane that, somewhat in spite of ourselves, stands between our bodies and the rest of the world, from the first sucking to the most tantalizing erotic experiences. Five years ago, Charlie Malgat chose to make it her favourite material by creating soft sculptures that are cut out of foam and then coated with latex. As toxic as it is sensual, this manufacturing process gives the objects both a playful and carnal aspect. The sculptures – which eventually come to life in animated films - are imagined as recreational objects, inert beings to be caressed, handled, mishandled and torn. Above and beyond their kid-friendly appearance, they are actually the manifestations of a world on the verge of bursting its banks.
In Latex Memories (2017-2022), Charlie Malgat offers a digest of her last five years experimenting with this elastic material. The result of this regurgitation is a hybrid and irreverent object. A gigantic book of images, a “best-of” of her more recent works recycled in an improbable hyperglycemic portfolio. It contains the forms which have been her companions for a long time, a multitude of variations around the organs involved in ingestion and excretion: tongues are set free by the strength of their muscles, mouths are deep throated and buttocks sing. These forms are accompanied by the community of sick and combative characters from Sugar Free, the film cycle she began working on in 2020 and whose future has yet to be written: Agony, the doughnut totem; Strong Head, the cannibal termite; and Acid Mush, the toxic mushroom.
To fit them into this regressive monograph, which is both an inventory and their tomb, the artist has chosen to flatten them uncompromisingly. It is as if the studio where she produces her works had suddenly been crushed by a supernatural cataclysm. Page after page, the figures seem to take stock of a post-apocalyptic universe in the making, while simultaneously being digested as an environmental disaster meets a saccharine utopia.
In 2021, Charlie Malgat presented her work in a solo exhibition SUGAR FREE at Les Bains-Douches art centre in Alençon, France). She is currently working on various projects in Europe and the United States.
– Pierre-Henri Foulon
Charlie Malgat (b. 1990, France) is in residency as part of the "Cité internationale des arts x Académie des Beaux-Arts" program.