LES ÎLOTS BLEUS BY APOLLINE DUCROCQ

Apolline Ducrocq was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer and graduated from the École Supérieure d’Art de Dunkerque-Tourcoing in 2021. Since then, she has benefited from numerous immersive experiences as an artist-in-residence in both France and Belgium. The starting point in her work is always a site or an abandoned location, a place whose forms, volumes and texture she sets out to explore, carrying out her investigations using photos taken on location, consulting plans and taking samples of materials. By printing her photos on a variety of building materials, she superposes picture planes and creates a unique archive. Her sculptures produced by transposing forms are like fragmented volumes rendered in a raw, uncompromising and yet fragile manner.

Drawn to a construction site aesthetic, to a state that is midway between ruins and reconstruction, Apolline Ducrocq became interested in the renovation of the stairs outside the Îlots bleus in Malo-les-Bains, a building that is an ideal example of the characteristic architecture of seaside resorts in the 1950s. Visiting the building site, she salvaged samples of the original material used to build the stairs – a bluish concrete sprinkled with quartz – and cut them into paving stone shapes, before patiently sanding one of the sides to reveal its pattern more clearly. The generic format of these blocks that suggests possible new uses contrasts with her other sculptures in which she applies a life-size shift of form. 

Using formwork techniques to replicate these shapes, she explores the dialectic between emptiness and plenitude and the contrasting notions of upside down and the right side up, inside and outside. The rebars that usually support the shape from within are exposed and doubled up by external frames that underline the movement. The exhibition design therefore becomes a new type of architectonics that plays with relationships of scale and balance, as well as the memories we preserve of cities in constant transformation.

Apolline Ducrocq is an artist-in-residence at Fructôse in Dunkirk, a support base for artists.

This exhibition was produced as part of the ARCHIPEL residency program managed by the Frac Grand Large together with Lille and Denain art schools.

With the support of Ramery Génie Civil – Travaux services in Dunkerque.