Melancholia
— 2016 —
In Marion Colomer’s recent work, Melancholia, beauty oscillates between daydreaming and doubt. Colomer’s large-scale watercolors guide the viewer toward a different perspective of the intimate. The work is in constant tension of regression, double meaning, and contradiction. In moments of narrative, sometimes the artist presents the Edenic lush jungle, where other times nature is all-consuming and dangerous, speaking to the threat of death that awaits us. Images of raw sexual desire are at once divested of meaning, lifted out of the realm of the pornographic, and detoxified in the soft renderings of drawn bodies, their expressions reflecting the melancholy of lost desire. The bodies are left blank, present in their absence as if their fragrance and essence faded. This series started with the sensuality of a scent, a perfume that would, to some, smell like a lost paradise, with a fragrance of green leaves and rainforest, while others would experience within this effluvia something dangerous, a smell of dampness, or of decomposing soil. For this immersive installation Colomer collaborated with Dana El Masri, New York City based perfumer, creating a original scent.
A Man, A woman, A couple: Watercolor, pencil and embroideries on paper, 78’’x 42.5’’, 2015-2016, Series of 17.