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Jannick Deslauriers’ recent exhibition at Show & Tell Gallery is a study in contrasts. Utilizing the lightest of materials–crinoline, tulle, lace, and organza, she constructs life-sized sculptures of physically and/or politically weighty objects such as a pair of hand grenades, a sewing machine, a typewriter, a tank. Suspended from above, the objects exert a spectral presence on the space, appearing as literal materializations of creative or destructive human impulses. Seen through this lens, an unassuming brick, rendered in terracotta-coloured crinoline and black thread, becomes a symbol of both our collective capacity to build society, and–when taken in hand and thrown through the scapegoat-of-the-moment’s window–to destroy it in turn.
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The net-like fabrics and contrasting stitching which delineate the objects’ forms are evocative of the drawn line, and Deslauriers does consider her works to be three-dimensional drawings. In this way they share a visual and conceptual link with the life-sized pen and ink drawings of Joan Linder. Undertaking a labour-intensive process of mark-making through which drawn lines replicate the effect of multitudinous small stitches, Linder executes detailed representations of seemingly mundane domestic objects as well as politically and sexually charged images. In so doing, she refracts the personal through the political, and vice versa.
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Jannick Deslauriers’ exhibition, What’s Left?, at Show & Tell Gallery
Jannick Deslauriers’ website
Joan Linder’s artwork and profile at Mixed Greens
Joan Linder’s website
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images, from top to bottom:
Jannick Deslauriers, Brick, 2010, crinoline and thread in a plexiglass box, #1 in a series of 25, 8 x 8 x 20 inches; Tank, 2010, crinoline and thread, dimensions variable; Relique, 2010, tulle and thread in a plexiglass case, 8 x 8 x 20 inches
Joan Linder, Black & Decker, 2010, ink on paper; Seven Eighty-Two, 2005, ink on paper; Seven Eighty-Two (detail); Vent, 2006, ink on paper