Gilles Leimdorfer ©
Portrait
The finely engraved metal carrying an almost imperceptible pattern is the signature of Fanny Boucher. Throughout her creations, raw, polished, patinated, steel-plated, and gilded copper takes on a life of its own in pieces of furniture, wall compositions, lighting fixtures, or boxes. Heliogravure plates offer exceptional plastic qualities: material, texture, and light are all inseparable. The purely plastic qualities of heliogravure are incomparable with any other printing technique. While this un-screened process allows for subtle nuances of gray gradients through an extremely fine grain, it is its deep blacks due to the thickness of the ink that make it unequalled. Heliogravure is no longer just a reproduction technique on paper but a creation in its own right, with the matrix at its center. It can be integrated and communicate with other materials such as wood, parchment, feather, fabric, leather, straw... in creations highlighting the transversality of the craft trades.
"The copper plate is called a matrix. I love this word. It speaks to the woman that I am. It carries the birth. Traditionally in engraving, matrices are scratched once the print run is finished to prevent them from being reused and they are stored at the back of the workshop. It has always been difficult for me to destroy and render obsolete a matrix once its duty of reproduction is over. A heliogravure copper plate has incredible plastic qualities, it sublimates the work, plays with its reflections and its reading."
Fanny Boucher offers a range of variations on the traditional printing medium of rag paper. Heliogravure thus enters into dialogue with leather, fabric, straw, feathers, parchment... opening the way to unprecedented combinations of materials for new creations. To meet the most demanding commissions and find aesthetic and technical answers to the projects entrusted to her, she questions her traditional know-how and plays with its limits, opening up a rich and precious dialogue with architects and interior designers.
Lauréate de la récompense Talents d’exception du Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main® 2020 En savoir plus
