Transmuted Bodies

It was in Mexico, at the National School of Fine Arts, supported by Professor Jesús Mayagoitia, that Rosalie D. Gagné began to integrate blown glass into her sculptural work. Without replacing metal, resins, and plastics in her work, like a philosopher’s stone, this new material prompted the sculptor to develop a project that from the outset had nuances like those of a laboratory experiment, where she would engage her own concerns and those of the viewer.

She discovered the plastic qualities of blown glass, capable of capturing or freezing the memory of a moment: “As the material crystallizes, it’s as if you freeze a scream under the impulse of breath.” Embedded in metal structures and everyday objects such as a meat grinder and other archetypal objects, blown glass unfolds; the structure directing the birth of the forms this material takes. As they contemplate the figures, viewers may feel familiar, yet at the same time, experience strangeness in the unrecognizable result of the piece.

Gagné proposes these Transmuted Bodies – as a metaphor for the human. Human beings transformed into breaths, moments of life? Bodies torn apart in which an internal world expands, with contours delimiting their expansion? What, who, fixes the limits of matter and flows?

There is a random nuance in the abstract figures of Transmuted Bodies, which translates into a play of perceptions. Revulsion, fascination, familiarity, sensuality, strangeness, are some of the reactions elicited by the sculptures.

— Translated excerpt from Estrella Olvera’s article: “La vida contenida en un soplo de arte”, EscapArte, UAM, Mexico, April 2002