Halfway into Canadian sculptor Liz Magor’s exhibition at Marcelle Alix, I brazenly swung myself down on a plinth only millimeters from a piece: a hyper-realistic black glove with a half-smoked cigarette balancing on its wrist. On its open palm, flecks of ash had been sprinkled like flakes of dirty snow.
Careless, I launched toward the cigarette, gesturing to pick it up. Somewhere in between this ordinary disregard for ordinary objects and my exit from the gallery, this same glove, with all of its fellow artworks, exercised a kind of magic on me — came alive so to speak — the same way some people, over the course of a lifetime, transform from unnoticeable props into distressingly precious creatures. Magor creates desiring objects. Their seduction works so subtly you barely notice it at first. They titillate by effusing a type of bluntly poised zeal. This same strong appeal ruminates inside the titles of the pieces in her current show: Leather Palm,Woolen Blanket, Xhilaration, Touch Me (all works 2019).
To reach Marcelle Alix, one has to climb a hill in one of Paris’s less monotone corners. Unlike chic arrondissementswhere only dog turds and tour guides rupture the momentum of beige facades, wan people, and pavements, the streets here are inundated with bright, crisp plastic; soaked, dilapidated fabric; abandoned, broken toys; and worn-out shoes that dangle from lampposts like impoverished piñatas. Entering Magor’s show you’ll find the same plastic bags, the same half-smoked butts, the same gelded teddy bears; you’ll find them hanging, folded, piled, and arranged. You’ll face the same ramshackle trinkets, only here they’re bathed in a firm forgiving light, as if they’d died and been resurrected.
Magor performs convalescence by means of displacement. Her shoes are not left dangling in semi-polluted voids but carefully arranged in customized boxes. In the first piece the viewer encounters (Xhilaration), twenty-four pairs protrude assuredly on a long purple velvet plinth like islands in a river. Never have forgotten faux-leather fashion whims been taken so seriously: two pointed cowboy boots complete with fake wear are encircled by thin golden chains like a pair of precious bulls; on a piece of silver wrapping, flanked by flowered walls, a pair of leopard-print high-heels are perfected with multicolored paper that fans from their mouths like neon peacock feathers.
In a parallel room, a cloud of diaphanous boxes made from Mylar discharge a soothing effect, like balm or breast milk. The hollow constellation hosts a handful of objets trouvés and light crinkled textures. A long piece of purple tulle mimics a fox collar in an adjacent container. Another piece, this one ice blue and curved, gestures obliquely to a stuffed dog head with large, glossy eyes. These are not the only eyes in the installation. On a smaller animal, two disproportionally huge eyeballs bulge out so violently they seem ready to burst. From an album cover, in the razor-sharp face of Mick Jagger, two catlike slits pierce and fix you. Like so much in this exhibition, they capture your attention by insisting on their presence.
