PRESS REVIEWS:

- Hyperallergic # January 23, 2017, by Ari Akkermans
- Deratisme Issue # 26, Feb. 2012, Dimension
- Numéro, issue March 2011, by Sean Rose (pdf in french)
- France 24, March 21, 2011, chronicle by Sean Rose (in french)
- l´Humanité, February 02, 2011, by Maurice Ulrich (pdf in french)
- France Culture, January 28, 2011, interview with Aude Lavigne (in french)
- L´Œil, issue February 2011, by Bénédicte Ramade (pdf in french)
- Mouvement, issue February 2011, by Pascaline Vallée (in french)
- France Culture, broadcasting La Grande Table, February 11, 2011(in french)
- Le Monde.fr Feb. 19-20 (pdf in french)
- Fluctuatnet, January 26, 2011, by Magali Lesauvage (in french)
- Inrockuptibles, issue 727, November 2009,by Philippe Noisette (pdf in french)
- Photos nouvelles issue nr. 35, September/October 2005 - page 47 (pdf in french)
- Le point issue nr. 1727, 20 October 20, 2005 - page 137

TEXTS FROM CATALOGUES/EXHIBITIONS :

• 2016 - by Nikolett Eros
The works and performances of Pierre-Étienne Morelle examine the relations and tension arising between the given space and the bodies, objects and materials appearing in this space, this way creating extreme situations.
The momentariness of these situations cannot easily be maintained, hence they are risky.
The starting point of the exhibition is the deconstruction of both classic galleryspaces and the mode of presenting the artworks.
The white cube – the archetype of modernist gallery-space – from an untroubled space where we meet works of art has become the focus of statements concerning art, therefore a point of intersection of conflicts.
The praised, then questioned, offended, and destroyed gallery-space has itself become the primary carrier of artistic messages.
Similarly, an independent life and a significance in content has been given to the frame of the artworks, and different parts of of the space that define it (corners and flat surfaces).
These are borders the bursting of which at the same time confirms the impossibility to evade them.
The frame and the glass protecting the artworks ensure the special status of the work, they highlight and surround that area where peculiar rules operate, rules that are different from everyday reality.
The exhibition reflects on these two crucial elements of being an artwork, and does so by disassembling them.
The presented constructions are not held together by nails, screws, or gluing, but the components are organised by the way they are wedged against each other.
The metal tip piercing from the wall and the strap-hinges bend the glass only until its flexibility allows it; it is on the verge of breaking.
On the other side the laths of the wooden frame are joined with clamps and at the same time strained by iron drills, however, the state realised this way seems to be a lasting equilibrium – at least we like to assume that the frame suggests permanence.
By undoing the traditionally joined relation between the frame and the glass, the artwork „leaks away,” while the work and the way of presentation switch roles: the frame and the glass, while they do not cease to challenge their own roles, simultaneously become artworks themselves.
There is nothing to do, the galleryspace, the white cube fulfils the expectations and turns the critical gestures into artworks.
This seemingly necessary transformation, however, is spectacularly contested by the installation of the inner space.
The construction, held and strained by rubber straps, through the deconstruction of the elements – now outside the frame and over the glass – forms a new, objectless picture: the interplay of shadows cast on the walls.

• 2011 by Eléonore Jacquiau Chamska
A serpentine gesture & other prophecies, FRAC Lorraine, Extract from catalogue & press release (pdf in english) - (pdf in french)

• 2010 - by Judith Wiedenhöft
Pierre-Etienne Morelle is a french born artist, who lives in Berlin since 2009.
In his installations and performances he quite often includes himself as an art-making person but also the spectator without whom most works would not work.
Considering this it is on one hand the process of making art, that he reveals in front of his audience by showing not necessarily a finished product, but rather certain steps that bring him to ending the work or revealing the process of repetition without a finished piece.
If a work is finished in the eyes of the artist though there is always the aspect of involving the audience: People have to climb over wooden barriers or find their way through a construction with rubber-straps. In any way it means that they have to cross a (inner or outer) barrier to proceed in the exhibition that Pierre-Etienne Morelle's work is a part of.
This dealing with the art work itself, touching or climbing it, crawling underneath it or holding it so that the artist can proceed with his work, might convey a feeling of insecurity or hesitance but on the other hand also the excitement of being appealed to and therefore being part of the work by interacting with it. (…) Here the viewer can not just stand in front of the work, look at it and think about a possible meaning or idea, he is asked to participate and to overcome his own inner barriers.

• 2005 Images au Centre 05, interview with Lise Viseux - Extract from catalogue (pdf in french)

• Footlights (extract) by Guillaume Mansart :
Translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods

(…) As a well-informed exprimenter, Pierre-Etienne Morelle tests the elasticity of all kinds of objects and bodies (including his own). He restricts (BodyConstrictor, 2005), subjects (Stepping up the Pressure, 2005), and tries to check the societal and mechanical forces he bestirs. But since nature and society are thus made, their pressures are always the most powerful, and artistic work is thus often written like a presentation of disappointment and failure. There is no disenchantment, however: just folly. “Reason is the strongest form of folly. The reason of the weakest is folly *,” wrote Ionesco. And the reference is cast, as if to remind us that, for the writers of the Absurd, only the resignation of reason can save man from despair.
(…)
The rules of play which Pierre-Etienne Morelle subscribes to are limiting but they express a viewpoint which is aware of the improbability of the impossible. The strategies applied have all the excess of the apparent modesty of the result. But the artist is not a manager, his work underpins an economy of the gift. It asserts the power of the shortfall and is written like a phonily candid response to the industry of instant effects. The flagrant nature of the process, the visibility of the limitation, are there to underscore, at every level, Pierre-etienne lays claim to an art of imbalance. As if to say that between reason and the lack thereof, between depth and derision, order and disorder, relevance and idiocy... everything, in the end of the day, clings to a thread Wavering.
*. Eugène Ionesco, Journal en miettes, Folio essais. Édition originale, Mercure de France, 1967.

• Les feux de la rampe (extrait) Guillaume Mansart :

(...) En expérimentateur averti, Pierre-Étienne Morelle teste l’élasticite? de toutes sortes d’objets ou de corps (dont le sien). Il contraint ( Body constricteur, 2005), soumet ( Faire monter la pression, 2005) ou tente d’empêcher les forces sociétales ou mécaniques qu’il provoque. Mais puisque la nature et la société sont ainsi faites, leurs pressions sont toujours les plus puissantes, et le travail artistique s’écrit souvent alors comme une mise en scène de la déception et de l’échec. Pas de désenchantement pourtant : de la déraison. « La raison c’est la folie du plus fort. La raison du moins fort c’est la folie *. », écrit Ionesco. Et la référence est lancée, comme pour rappeler que pour les écrivains de l’Absurde, seule la démission de la raison peut sauver l’homme du désespoir.
(...)
Les règles du jeu auquel se soumet Pierre-Étienne Morelle sont contraignantes, mais elles disent un point de vue qui sait l’improbabilité de l’impossible. Les stratégies mises en oeuvre ont la démesure de l’apparente modestie du résultat. Mais l’artiste n’est pas un gestionnaire, son oeuvre soutient une économie du don. Elle affirme la puissance du déficit et s’écrit comme une réponse faussement candide à l’industrie de l’effet immédiat. La flagrance du processus, la visibilité de la contrainte sont là pour souligner qu’à tout niveau Pierre-Etienne revendique un art du déséquilibre. Comme pour dire qu’entre raison et déraison, profondeur et dérision, ordre et désordre, pertinence et idiotie...tout ne tient finalement qu’à un fil. Fluctuant.
*. Eugène Ionesco, Journal en miettes, Folio essais. Édition originale, Mercure de France, 1967