Emilie Louise Gossiaux

Emily Watlington

Mother Gallery, Beacon

Mother Gallery

<div>Installation image of Memory of a Body. Left to Right: “Atomic Tangerine: Looking at the Sun with Your Eyes Closed,” “Cerulean: Big Sur Summer 2010,” and “Looking Through the Leaves at Two Lovers Making Out.” This picture was taken at eye level height facing a corner of Mother Gallery in Beacon New York. The floor looks rusty with splotches of burnt coppers, dirty browns and exposed grays. The walls are brick, painted with so many coats of white paint that the definition of each brick is hard to distinguish, making individual bricks unclear or hard to define. Hanging from the ceiling are tubes of fluorescent lightbulbs, emitting a crisp and clear white light.<br><br></div><div>In the center of the image is a large blue shape, it looks like a wedge or ramp on the floor. To the left of the blue wedge, hanging on the wall behind is a large circle with splotches of oranges, browns, and gold. To the right of the blue wedge, on the wall catty corner to the orange circle is a rectangular canvas that is mostly green in color with a white shape in the center of the canvas.</div>

<div>Installation view showing "Cerulean: Big Sur Summer 2010" in the foreground. This piece is a large, interactive soft sculpture that is the embodiment of the tidal pool in northern California, Big Sur. It is 30 inches tall, 60 inches wide, and 142 inches long. The sculpture is large enough for 4 people to sit, or recline on it at once. It is padded with soft memory foam, and lined with blue felt giving the sensation of floating and sinking as if in water.<br><br>In the background is an oil painting on a twin sized bed sheet, “Looking Through the Leaves at Two Lovers Making Out”. This is a landscape painting, 48 inches tall, and 64 inches long. If you look closely, you can see a floral pattern from the original bed linen. It shows the outlines of two figures kissing, but leaves in the foreground kind of obscure your view.</div>

<div>"Dancing with London” is a sculptural installation of 2 dogs, each a representation of the artist’s guide dog, London, who is a golden Labrador Retriever. The dogs are standing up, 53 inches tall on their hind legs and 3 feet apart. They face each other with their front legs extended out in front of their bodies, as if they are about to leap into the air. There is enough space for you to stand between them and hold up each of its paws, like in a dance. Their eyes are closed, with a serene look on their face, with a hint of a smile. The paws are sculpted with details of each little finger, and their nails are glossy and smooth. When you hold onto them, you can feel the underside of the paw is a leathery texture, like the soft padding of a dog’s paw. On the dog’s belly are little nipples, the back has the look of combed fur, and its tail curves up in a swoop.</div>

<div>Installation image in which “Atomic Tangerine: Looking at the Sun with Your Eyes Closed” hangs prominently on the wall just behind the blue wedge. A circular painting 64 inches in diameter, it is slightly smaller than the average human arm span. Instead of using canvas, Emilie applied oil and enamel paint to a gold cotton cloth. The way these materials interact creates a dynamic surface and the gold cotton underneath creates additional flickers and sparkles of light that reflect as your eye moves around the painting. The surface also has a visual quality like fire or embers because there is a mix of warm colors like deep reds, dirty oranges, and burnt sienna in a variety of shades, some are bright and some are dark. More literally, the surface looks like a galaxy of different shades of orange, browns, and golds that are speckled, splotched, and colliding with one another across the composition.</div>

<div>3 of 6 drawings hanging in a single line next to each other. Each drawing is 17 and a half inches tall, and 23 inches wide. The artist uses a ball point pen to draw indented outlines into the paper, and colors them with waxy crayons. If you look at the drawings closely, or if you were to touch them, you could perceive that the lines are slightly raised from the surface of the paper. From left to right is “Arm, Tail, Butthole”. A hand comes out from the right corner of the drawing, and holds up the tail of a yellow Lab, playfully exposing its butthole. The second drawing is “London Licking Foot on Hairy Leg”. Coming out from the top right corner is a very hairy leg with a large thigh and a skinny ankle dangling its foot off from the edge of the bed. Coming out from the bottom left side of the drawing, London stands with her pink tongue reaching out to lick the foot that hangs in mid-air. In the third drawing, “London Mounting the Couch”, London is seen from behind, her hind legs are on the floor, as her front paws are about to lift herself up onto a pink floral couch.</div>

<div>Second 3 of 6 drawings hanging in a single line next to each other. From left to right: “Self portrait with London and couch”. The artist, Emilie is on the left. She has long brown hair, blue eyes, pink lips, and is wearing a white t-shirt. London looks at an angle down to the right side of the drawing, and the couch floats above her head.&nbsp;<br><br>To the right of that, is a fantastical drawing, “London in the Presence of the Goddess”. The goddess Venus is bare-breasted with long wavy blonde hair, reclines on a bed with a sheet loosely covering her legs. She is propped up on one elbow, and extends her left arm, reaching down towards London. London stands on all fours at the foot of the bed, about to touch the goddess’s hand with her nose. They are outside in nature, with flowers in the grass below London’s feet.&nbsp;<br><br>The last drawing on the right is, “Hand in Paw”, a simple drawing of a human hand wrapping its fingers around London’s paw, as if they were holding hands on a walk.</div>

“Finger Through Palm” is a small papier-mache sculpture of two hands cut off at the wrist. It is painted thickly with cartoony peachy pink skintone, and the fingernails are glossy light pink. The right hand has its palm facing out, with its fingers closed together. The left hand has its index finger extended, poking the center of the palm, and the finger pierces through the palm to the other side.

<div>On the floor, is a small, ceramic sculpture of a left foot with a white steel rod sticking out of it, called “Outerspace: My Dad’s Old Tattoo, Smiley Ankle”. The sculpture has been painted to match the color of the artist’s dad’s skintone, which is a light tan. On the ankle, the artist carved out the drawing of a weird smiley face that is an actual tattoo on her father’s foot. The inside is filled with soft, black foam, which seeps out of the incision of the tattoo.</div>

<div>Another small, ceramic sculpture of an ankle that is 3 inches tall, 3 inches long, and 2 inches wide. The ankle has the same tattoo as the foot. The artist and her father share the same tattoos on their ankles, but they mirror each other. His is on his left ankle, and hers is on her right.</div>

Emilie Louise GossiauxMemory of a BodyMother Gallery, Beacon

Exhibition Images

Emilie Louise GossiauxMemory of a Body
Mother Gallery, Beacon