Bal de têtes

Chloé Poizat

Éditions Cornélius

Chloé Poizat guides us in a subtly disturbing creation. Children grow on trees where they will be hanged, or come out in smoke from chimneys. Decapitated bodies, severed heads, mutilated trunks, bear witness to some unheard-of catastrophe, as if erased from our memory. Wrapped in mute horror, we venture into the world of nightmares, encountering ambiguous ghosts. Cabbage-headed dog or snail-headed man, young girl on fire, these apparitions float on the border between dream and reality, conscious and unconscious, condemned to eternal wandering. Bal de têtes resembles the parade of fairground monsters and the cabinet of curiosities. The album is haunted by half-bestial, half-human creatures, resulting from improbable crossings and failed metamorphoses. Working from postcards, photos, printed images, Chloé Poizat recovers familiar icons, which she diverts, tinkers, mixes, and assembles, until the impression of déjà vu turns to doubt and to discomfort. The black and white of old engravings, subverted by splashes of harsh colors, further blurs the markers. Chloé Poizat gives shape to ancestral fears, to nocturnal monsters, which we would have liked to forget. We expect to come across, randomly in his absurd universe, Odilon Redon, Gourmelin, or Topor. And the shadow of Lautréamont is not far away.