Brandon Morris presents a body of work that feels both familiar and unsettling. Tissu Expansé arrives in Paris during a season when ghost stories and costumes fill streets and shop windows. The timing sharpens the sensation that something unseen might linger just beyond the frame. Five gowns made of fiberglass and resin stand without bodies, yet they hold themselves as if perfectly aware of their own shapes. Folds ripple. Skirts lift. Sleeves extend toward a presence that never appears.
These dresses belong to the artist’s ongoing Ghost Dresses series. Earlier pieces carried a darker weight, with silhouettes twisted and hunched as though possessed by something monstrous. The current works carry a different charge. Pale blue surfaces soften the atmosphere. The shapes are more open, more animated. A skirt bends in a graceful arc, as if caught mid-stride. One dress leans forward, arms reaching outward. Another blooms outward in motion, as though its wearer has just spun around and left the moment suspended in air. The viewer does not see a figure, yet the figure is unmistakably there.
The materials contribute to the illusion. Fiberglass wraps around sewn forms, hardening seams and pleats into permanent gestures. There is a tension between the rigidity of the resin and the suggestion of soft, flowing fabric. Each piece feels like a memory turned into sculpture. Clothing often remembers its wearer through faint shape and wear. Here that memory becomes the complete subject. The dresses hold posture without support. They imply motion without movement. They appear caught between stillness and continuation.
The effect is neither frightening nor gentle. A quiet strangeness settles in the room. Viewers might feel as though they have entered only a moment too late, the figures having just slipped away. At the same time, the work encourages the mind to fill in the absent body. The imagination becomes a collaborator. One might picture a dancer, a child running, a figure turning at the sound of a name. The absence becomes a presence, and the presence becomes something shared between object and viewer.
Tissu Expansé also touches on the relationship between fashion and identity. Clothing is often treated as an extension of the self. A person chooses a garment to express mood, status, desire or memory. Here the garment stands alone. Identity floats somewhere between the folds. The dresses no longer serve a wearer. They become characters in their own right.
The exhibition remains on view through October 30 in Paris. The work invites viewers to linger in the quiet space between what is visible and what is imagined. The dresses do not need bodies to feel alive. The room provides the rest.
