CURATOR'S TEXT

Metal, crinoline, clay, plaster… Eclectic mixtures and dark colors connect these artists through the plasticity of their work. Their affinity goes beyond their material exploration: a fascination for existential paradoxes and a questioning of spatio-temporal spaces are the cornerstones of their encounters.

It is the detail of a disaster, the rear lights of a vehicle in shreds, a life-size crash. Sentence, souffle et linceul stages an event of destruction. While Jannick emphasizes the trivialization of the tragedies generated by the media, she captures a moment, an ephemeral or not, or a symbol of contemporary society, which she translates through ingenious techniques. The heaviness of the subject is then transposed into a cloud of crinoline meticulously burnt here and there – all supported by a light, imperceptible metallic structure. This combination of materials creates a ghostly effect, making the sculpture transcend beyond the object status.

The zenith is the highest point above our head and the nadir is the lowest below our feet; hence the title of the sculpture by Jesus Castro Rosas, Zénith-Nadir. In this work, we can observe a form of humanoid head, placed on the ground, facing the sky, a bit like at the intersection of the zenith and the nadir. That’s precisely why the artist has focused on the alloy between several materials, sometimes delicate, sometimes raw. This work is the result of a mixture of clay, recycled metals, plaster and water: a complex amalgam designed somewhat at random. This experimentation reflects the artist's questions on the divergence between ways of thinking and visions of the world. Having lived in Mexico until he immigrated to Quebec in his mid-twenties, Jesus draws his inspiration mainly from his paradoxical life between the south and the north. 

With Sentence, souffle et linceul, Jannick Deslauriers creates an antinomy between the heaviness of a disastrous event and its relationship to space-time, ephemeral, as it melts under a mountain of miscellaneous facts. Both express these concepts through material exploration and produce work with a heterogeneous rendering.