The mental images of Manon Wertenbroek are strikingly moving. Her constructions combine a classic subject—portraiture—with an instinctive plastic research. The artist builds her images by accumulating layers and subjects before photographing them as portraits. Out of a need to inflate materiality to an inner, complex and unsteady energy, the sculpting preparatory process is central to the work. The artist cuts shapes out of paper, and then reflects them on her computer screen. The process is finalized through the shooting, as a means to frame the created expressive space and con- fine these emotions. Characters emerge from these poetic “Fusions,” midway between sculpture, painting and photography, as if springing from the artist’s past, each letter being the first letter of the name of the person whose imaginary portrait is created.
—Tatyana Frank, director of museum Élysée in Lausanne
