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Thérèse CHOTTEAU's Exhibition
From June to July 12, the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris opened the doors of its library to the joint exhibition of its collection of mathematical models and the sculptures of Belgian artist Thérèse Chotteau.
Out of 400 geometrical, topological and algebraic models, over a hundred recently restored were selected by Jean Brette, Head of the Mathematics Department of the Palais de la Découverte in Paris.
Most of them were manufactured out of wood, plaster, cardboard and wire at the beginning of this century. Their undecipherable plasticity already caught the eye of the surrealist artists, Man Ray and André Breton. Having seen three of them in the retrospective André Breton exhibition in the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1991, Thérèse Chotteau was led to discover the whole collection then stored in dark corridors of the Institut Henri Poincaré.
Searching for the reason of her fascination, she photographed and drew sketches of the models in the Institut Henri Poincaré and worked in her studio in Brussels on the relationship between geometrical form and human figure.
The idea of bringing together those intriguing forms and her sculptures seemed a necessity for her work as a sculptor. It is the result of all those connections apparent in this exhibition.
The subset of the exhibition presents two capitals, made of white precast concrete, for a house built for a mathematician. Their motive is geometry, through the eyes of child and adult. The house itself was designed on the theme of fractals by architect Thierry Gonze and some drawings are displayed here.
The exhibition has been an intriguing approach for the artist as for all visitors.