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Eve Bailey

Tongue in Cheek

Eve Bailey  Tongue in Cheek

source: evebaileynet

Eve Bailey’ s work is based on the concept of balance and coordination. Rooted in the tradition of the artist-engineer, she creates ergonomic and kinetic sculptures as well as complex line drawings that embody her love for architecture and dance. The body interests her as a perceiving structure. Bailey experiments with the sense of spatial orientation to design and build forms sympathetic to human embrace that she and professional dancers occasionally perform on. Live performances, videos and photographs reveal the objects’ uncanny functionality, relating the work to our environment and our human potential. In recent projects, Bailey has choreographed performances with professional dancers in New York and Moscow, and is now developing practicable sculptures for the public.

Bailey has exhibited her work in France, Russia, Germany, Cuba, Switzerland, The Netherlands and across the US. She was awarded funded residencies from Triangle Arts Organization (NY), the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (NE), the I-Park Foundation (CT), Sculpture Space (NY) and the 3D-Verbier Foundation (Switzerland). Bailey holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Ecole des Beaux Arts (Paris) and a BFA in Architectural metal work from Olivier de Serres School of Design (Paris). She received fellowships from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and the San Francisco Art Institute to study abroad. It is after an exchange program at the San Francisco Art Institute that she started incorporating performance in her sculptural work. Bailey was classically trained in ballet and music theory at the Lorraine Conservatory in France. She practiced the discipline of Capoeira with masters in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and in the US.

Bailey’ s sculpting techniques are inspired by her professional background as a fabricator and model maker. She engineered countless prototypes for design and architectural companies, created numerous models and sets for the fine arts, advertising and movie industries and has experience as a building contractor. Additionally, Bailey taught perspective techniques to mural painting students in Paris, specializing in the construction of anamorphosis. Her interest in representational methods is ongoing. She wrote an essay about a new groundbreaking system in the representation of visual reality recently published in the first volume of The Funambulist (read here). Bailey lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently a member of the curatorial committee at the I-Park Foundation in East Haddam (CT). She shares a studio with her husband, sculptor and special make-up effect artist, Adam Bailey (abfxstudio).
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source: evebaileynet
“I feel all life is an improvisation. And to be able to express it through movement is the most natural, health full and happiness producing way to be.” Frances Wessells
My work is based on the concepts of balance and coordination. The body interests me as a perceiving mechanical structure. I use my own body as a primary tool to create pieces that experiment with equilibrium through physical, mechanical, plastic and conceptual means. My studio practice is rooted in the tradition of the artist engineer. I design and build suspended and pendular constructions that can sustain their own weight and mine as I perform with them. By climbing and inverting on the structures, I challenge my own perception and creative process.
With the combination of the two mediums sculpture and performance, I seek balance in the mind versus body relationship. My work alternates between theory and practice. The intellect occurs in the engineering of my structures and the sensuality arises from my body in motion, bringing together two talents commonly thought as disparate: male versus female, rational versus instinctive. All my pieces are created upon contrastive ideas and principles. I constantly play with contradictions whether they are of visual, physical or conceptual nature.
The actions that I undertake require strength and concentration in order to achieve them gracefully. I challenge my body and the structures I design in a very similar fashion, testing their potential and pushing the limit of their constraints without compromising their physical integrity. What matters to me is the improbable character of the relation between a gesture and its support. Like a dancer or an acrobat, I focus on the quality of the movement and form. I am able to momentarily fight against gravity by coordinating my body’s geometry and rhythm with the sculpture’s mechanical properties.
I like taking the time to conceive and build a functional device that does not serve a practical purpose. The organic shapes in my sculptures and the rigging involved indicate the possibility of usage and movement. As I climb on the structures, I reveal to the viewer the uncanny functionality of the unfamiliar machines. I perform the gestures in front of the audience at opening and closing nights (sometimes much more). Each performance allows me to function in unison with the piece mentally, physically and poetically.
The city is a recurring source of investigations. Our bodies are constantly adapting and bending to the configurations of buildings and the designs of transportations. In recent drawings, urban blueprints fuse with human anatomical representation. Through my performances, I emphasize on the ideas of flexibility and lightness. The machines I build serve to express the elegance of a gesture, a finite moment of equilibrium. The physical interventions bring meaning and depth to the installation, showing how human activities can be equally painful, useless, beautiful, comical, endearing and absolutely necessary.