Coming across Noële Baker’s sculptures garantees a frontal shock. Baker is a Genevese artist who has been experimenting bronze as well as cast concrete or synthetic resins for 20 years now. She dares to combine them with transparent or opaque synthetic sheets which are either immaculate or annotated.

This technique reinforces the impression of lightness which is already created by thin vertical or oblique rods out of which female figures emerge. Mini-fertility goddesses or simply immaterial humanoids are Noële Baker’s leitmotiv. In a contemporary way they are integrated to a geometric shape and almost evolve into their own prolongation (or vice-versa). Moreover the hieratic aspect of these figures which are built around a stiff although dynamic skeleton underlines the difficulty as well as the beauty of an upward movement. Baker definitely strives for clean lines but mostly involves space effects breathtaking in “The turning Point” (1994, 1m70) timeless in “Filigree” (1997,4m).

The fusion of form and figure is accentuated in “Vol de Nuit” in which a raising trail spreads out in the shape of a colored cast concrete sail. In the same dynamic way water becomes a mirror in which the sculptures of the monumental outdoor work “Aerial roots” are enlarged. Among dominant vertical lines and disconcerting oblique lines this artist ultimately invites us to an essential dialogue or indeed to a confrontation with her sculptures which are a poetic and material allegory of creation.

Mélina Bérini
La Clef /No 55/ 2000.
(Translated from French).