Pascale Marchesini-Arnal, iron and paper sculptor
Over 30 years of sculpture: a great period of life! Pascale Marchesini-Arnal started out modelling in clay, then moved on to plaster and composite materials, before finally creating paper sculptures on wire.
Before she opted for artistic creation, she had a busy career: her studies in modern literature shaped her mind and general culture. Her years abroad (England, Germany and Morocco) developed her empathy and understanding of people. Her work in the business world has stimulated her qualities of order, method and communication. She reinvests these skills in her daily life and artistic creation.
Sculpting intimate stories
For 5 years, Pascale was introduced to materials and volume in a collective workshop. She learnt to allow herself to express herself, not to judge what she was doing, to let herself explore unusual possibilities.
Janus pour révélateur assourdissant
One day, in the privacy of her own home, she decided to create a self-portrait in the form of a Janus*. On one side, Pascale’s modelling depicts her with one eye wide open, and on the other she sketches the gaze of her father, whose beard merges with her own hair.
[ * Traditionally, this Roman god is two-faced, with one face turned towards the past and the other towards the future..]
Sometimes you just have to turn around people in order to understand them
During the public exhibition of this piece, overwhelmed by emotion, Pascale lost her hearing for the duration of the opening. After this event, she decided to leave the collective workshop and continue sculpting in a different way, completely on her own.
Finding her own style as a sculptor and asserting paper as a material
Pascale’s work has gradually moved away from clay, plaster and filasse, and turned to paper as her favourite material, mounted on wire or concrete reinforcing bars.
At first, she had fun pretending to be like bronze or steel with her patinated paper spider men.
Then she worked on the broken body and human ageing with sienna-coloured and red ochre coffee-based patinas.
Old booties, newspapers and recycled silk paper make their mark. For some pieces she has bronze prints made.
Behind the artist's smile, a deep concern for our humanity
In her studio, various artistic universes communicate: the space is bathed in light and highlights her works and those of artist friends. The expressionist note dominates.
The artist is cheerful, but her realistic vision of the world is somber. On the theme of transhumance, from “D’étranges cavaliers” to “Où va le monde”, she gives birth to spindly fantastic creatures: twists of iron, pieces of animal skull or small vertebrae, holes and balls of gestation evoke a distant past or future. But rather than being consumed by worry, the sculptor invests herself into dreams.
In their pierced boats or on foot, her humans make their way: if we’re optimistic, they’re going to the beach… or else they’re in search of healthy water that’s become scarce….
The editorial team
The thrill of artistic discoveries
