Catherine Thiry moulds the clay with large strokes, just as a painter applies paint to canvas. Her technical mastery gives a special power to the works magnified by bronze and iron. You can feel the moment of creation in each print, quick movements that literally bring the material to life. Her unique work is a tribute to the gesture, where the sketch tends towards the absolute.
The work Damme is exhibiting is called Epicene, which can be male or female. It is a monumental sculpture representing a human face. The artist is deliberately vague about the gender, confiding that she never bothered to find out whether it was a man or a woman. When Catherine Thiry makes a work, gender is secondary to the narrative. It is the 'being' beyond its gender and what she wants to tell the viewer.