“Odile Ferron-Verron’s compositions capture the formalised universe of industrial machinery in order to invent a conjectural and disturbing pictorial space where derelict engines and rows of mechanical devices are captured in a process of estrangement and become genuine objects of meditation. Waste grounds, snow-covered plains, Nordic shorelines and eerie canalscapes are the places imagined to stage the disarticulated ersatz of industry.
Us ing unorthodox worlds in which docklands or vast building sites on urban outskirts are used metaphorically, the artist tracks down the material signs of dysfunctionality in our civilisation. Arranged in line in the desert, the generators of an hydro-electric power-station evoke the mechanized sarcophagi of cosmonauts once in pursuit of heroic deeds; the arm of a digger appears to have run aground in front of a concrete dam like a military vessel in front of a bunker; forsaken against a modern palisade of perfect blue, a rust-eaten tool seems to belong to another era, as if in exile, the sole survivor of a deluge.”
G. Le Cuff
