Sorbonne Artgallery

"I am a sculptor and I question the deported spaces,

the intermediate spaces,

the spaces that one does not see at first glance.
In my practice I assemble.
I am interested in fire, in withdrawals, in transformations.
The use of ceramics allows me all this,
I thus explore soft and tense forces, ancient gestures,
feminine attitudes"

Gabrielle Wamabaugh

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"A series of gestures that consist in arranging, encompassing what does not fit together naturally, creating zones of rapprochement between these singular points, highlighting and connecting them, making them happen together, that they are transformed into a new form, which fills them without identifying them. Then something can be born and rise, not by regulation but by the addition of non-miscible, non-malleable materials.
This shaping would be translating, accepting that the operation of translation proceeds by variation or oscillation, that it emits back and forth between knowing and feeling, between projecting and doubting, that it induces new elucidations thanks to the setting up of a whole apparatus of questions that still remain unanswered. Questioning the place where it touches, pointing and getting to the place of the possible junction. Where a look to be built and a feeling to be insinuated would begin.
Doesn't the simplest of perceptions form from doubt about the thing perceived or the desire for that thing? One desires and one does not think to be afraid since one lets go and accepts to lose control. What moves is the matter itself. A form is always heard from the periphery, that is to say from where it moves, impalpable, what it flirts with. To move, to sculpt, is to shift from one form to its reverse and it is also to rhythm, to jump from one interval to another, and take the pulse of the air's rhythm along with the substance. A shape is then apprehended, engendered in this matter: a form informs the matter itself ". 

Excerpt from EXPLOSANTE-FIXE, by Frank Smith, based on dialogues between Frank and Gabrielle.

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Gabrielle Wambaugh is a sculptor, winner of the Altadis prize in 2002, with a first monograph published by acte sud, she won her first public commission in 2003 in the city of Daegu in Korea. In 2005 and 2006, she was invited to take up a research residency at the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, Cité de la céramique. In 2007, 2008 and 2014, it is at the EKWC international ceramics center that she pushes her research in stoneware and questions "fusions". Winner of the Norma Lipman Research Fellowship in 2007, she resides a few years in Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom and benefits from a publication supported by the Arts Council of England, the University of Newcastle and the University of Sunderland "the power of losing control" ISBN 978-0-9557478-5-4. Gabrielle Wambaugh's work has been shown in numerous museums, art centers and private galleries in Europe, the United States and Korea: Le Grand Hornu in Belgium, the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy, as well as at the Capitoline Museum in Rome and at the "Porcelaine de Sèvres" exhibition at the Princely Palace of Monaco. Part of his sculptural research is marketed by the Cité de la céramique, Manufacture de Sèvres following a new research residency on stoneware carried out in 2010-2011. His work is represented in France by the Galerie Eric Dupont in Paris.

 

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In 2015, winner of a public commission from the city of Vitry sur Seine, she created for the outdoors: "Merveilleuse Marie Madeleine dans les nuages", a sculpture entirely made of sandstone. http://www.wambaugh.us/prix.htm In 2017 she participated in Ceramix at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, Netherlands, Musée de Sèvres and at the Maison Rouge, Antoine de Galbert Foundation. Gabrielle Wambaugh works mainly with ceramics but also elaborates installations mixing ceramics, chalk and rubber. In 2018 at La Galerie Municipale Jean Collet and at the Galerie Eric Dupont she will present ricochets sculptures, suggested or covered, of those which are not seen at first glance and which open to several interpretations. She also presents large wall drawings and photographs through which she underlines the ambiguous character of sculpture and explores the notions of periphery, norm, genre and representation. A text by Frank Smith traces these commitments.