Excroissance by Matheline Marmy at Casa Azul, Gordola
Jun 07, 2026 - Jun 28, 2026
Venue: Casa Azul, Gordola, Switzerland (please see more here: https://casaazul.verzascafoto.ch/)
Curated by Maddalena Mora
This exhibition was born two years ago, from a dialogue between Matheline Marmy and myself developed in Paris during our respective residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts. We were both exploring ideas connected to agencies of matter: charged, powerful, unstable matter, capable of generating relations and transformations. The interconnection between metals, oxides, plants, soil, and electricity fed an exchange which today finds a new form at Casa Azul through a site-specific exhibition.
Entering the first room, skeletons of welded steel and copper covered with oxidized textiles are presented. In these works, the process of mineral powders oxidizing on textile is something Marmy likens to a form of painting through and with time: a time that seems to extend beyond human measure, evoking a planetary dimension. Reste (2026) and Lifespan (2026) are sculptures revealed through chemistry, as photographs are in their most elementary form. The colors that emerge are at times seductive and potentially threatening. This tension between attraction and toxicity runs through the artist's research and develops further in the repetition of a form emerging in the main exhibition room of Casa Azul.
In the main room, Marmy takes the structure of an existing work as a starting point to develop her installation Excroissance (2026). Allowing a shape to develop through repetitive, almost obsessive gestures across several sculptural techniques, this circularity evolved in plaster, latex, wax, and finally bronze cast. Without becoming a fixed or representative entity, this multiplication shifts from the natural toward the mechanical : it may recall flower buds, while also evoking overheated, non-functional airflow systems. At Casa Azul, the installation engages directly with the architecture and memory of the place. The walls, displaying dark marks of time, humidity, variations in temperature, and traces of their own long history, act not as mere containers but as active presences, against which the bronze casts of the Untitled (Excroissance) series appear.
Down the stairs, in what used to be a cellar, Container (25), a stainless steel container in which glass, iron, and copper react to one another (conceived initially for an outdoor exhibition in Geneva), finds a new context, entering into relation with the environment of the house.
The process behind this exhibition evolved and transformed, much like its title. In conversation with Matheline, the word Excroissance opened onto a new reading of the entire arc her works went through, and of the ways they might be encountered. I was able to witness and accompany the different stages of the work in the main room, from the foundry to the walls of Casa Azul. We spent days in a chaotic, noisy space that shaped our thinking and our ways of looking, just as the warm wax was removed from and added to these forms.
An excrescence carries a first negative association : something that appears in the wrong place. And yet, perhaps it is simply a deviation from a predetermined path, one that can become a surprise, an opening onto things seen differently. Definitions sometimes fix things, reducing them to only one meaning, when in fact they can be more: beauties concealed within the change that transforms them.
Matheline Marmy is a Geneva-based visual artist. Her sculptural practice examines the intersections between cultural and natural systems and how they reconfigure our environment. Her focus lies on so-called inert materials, their interactions with human processes, and non-human temporalities.
Her work has been shown in institutions across Switzerland and internationally, including the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, Stadtgalerie Bern, RIB, Rotterdam. She has been supported by residency programs including Pro Helvetia, the Cité Internationale des Arts, the Landis & Gyr Foundation, and is a 2026 Pro Helvetia / South Africa fellow. She holds a BA in Photography from ECAL and an MA in Fine Arts from the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
Matheline is currently co-curating Widefield projects, a platform for contemporary art.
Maddalena Mora (*1993, Ticino) is an independent curator and artist. She graduated in 2021 from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan and lives and works in Ticino, collaborating with organizations including the Verzasca Foto Festival and Casa Azul while pursuing her artistic practice.
This exhibition has been supported by FMAC - Genève, OCC - Canton de Genève, Oertli Stiftung and Migros Kulturfonds. We thank them for their support. We also thank Perseo Foundry Mendrisio.