Jannick Deslauriers
Chantier, Art mûr, Montréal, 2013.
Photo : © Mike Patten, permission de l'artiste | courtesy of the artist
Through a series of construction tools made of transparent textiles, Jannick Deslauriers draws our attention to the presence (too often taken for granted) of objects and events with which we interact.
If, at first sight, the work evokes the notions of construction, of frame, the visitor quickly realizes that the objects it comprises are empty and only simulate the forms they represent. These, emptied of their parts and severed from their initial purpose, are henceforth useless. Added to Chantier’s spatiality of realities and absences is a temporal element. On the one hand, the appearance of the “ongoing process” of the objects — emphasized among others by the presence of seams — renders the production cycle of the work almost visible. Conversely, the evolutionary character of the building site finds itself immobilized in the gallery, evolving into nothing new.
Chantier illustrates the state of change that undoubtedly characterizes our ontology and that of our environment and draws attention to the transitory nature of the objects that make up history, to the “disappearance of our era.” For, ironically, Chantier manifests our incapacity to construct, or, at the very least, the fragility of all human enterprise.
Based on the text “‘L’incapacité de construire’: les tempor(é)alités de Chantier,” by Vincent Marquis.
[Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft]
Chantier, Art mûr, Montréal, 2013.
Photo : © Mike Patten, permission de l’artiste | courtesy of the artist
