Bearing in mind the usually seductive and delicate work of Jannick Deslauriers, with its large vaporous textile works, one is completely taken aback when one enters 1700 La Poste and sees a veritable apocalyptic scene in the main hall of the art center . But what is this Phasmes installation that she took a month and a half to create on site?
Wandering through the “rubble”, we can make out the remains of child’s strollers, dusty swings – with their seat belts that seem derisory -, a broken wheelchair and small disjointed beds, all in the middle of rubble and small bits of charcoal strewn on the floor and dust imprinted on the walls. As if there had been a tornado that would have been unleashed in these places and that we would discover the dramatic effects.
Chains hang down, smeared with dirt. Steel rods fan out from the center of the room to form a sort of dislocated merry-go-round skeleton. During the press visit, the journalists exchanged their impressions. Is it a hideously ransacked kindergarten (what a horror picture)? A representation of the war in Ukraine? The result of a natural disaster? Jannick Deslauriers said she finds it normal that her installation leads the visitor to contemplate all sorts of dramas. Especially since before starting her creation in situ, she had no idea of the final result.
“This sculpture gives the impression of a body that was present and is no longer,” said Isabelle de Mévius, who sees Phasmes as a way for the artist to “rediscover and restore the world of his childhood.” .
Jannick Deslauriers explains that Phasmes results from a turning point that has taken place in her practice since her master’s studies at Yale University. She has since been interested in other materials and other techniques. Vinyl made an appearance, as did ash and steel. “I loved welding because it’s a lot like sewing,” she says. It’s a somewhat similar gesture, because we attach parts together. »
The initial idea for his installation came to him from images of carousels, medical equipment, old flying machines, bicycles, etc. “I started thinking about a structure that could make us fly away,” she said. Each object being like an imaginary seat. A lover of philosophy, Jannick Deslauriers was inspired by Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. These concrete spaces that house the imagination, like a child’s cabin or a merry-go-round.
In the artist’s imagination, the carousel was spinning but stopped working and left ghostly marks on the walls. Traces of childhood, for Jannick Deslauriers who has always been interested in memory, existence, the intimacy of the body. Hence the title of his work, Phasmes, named after this mimetic insect that imitates its surrounding nature by recording its physical memory.
Everyone will interpret Phasmids in their own way. It remains that this instinctive work is remarkable. When we pass to the basement – where his crinoline float is – and to the mezzanine where the artist has placed other textile works (including a line of electric poles, a camera, a sewing machine and the ghost in polyester and tulle from the facade of the former Queen’s Hotel in Montreal), we realize that Jannick Deslauriers now gives more substance to his artistic approach.
“It’s true,” she said. I needed to get rid of the seductive object a bit. I wanted something rawer. That’s why I like Louise Bourgeois, Teresa Margolles and Anselm Kiefer. And my mastery allowed me to move towards something more liberated. It’s not for nothing that Eva Hesse influences me! »
The exhibition is accompanied by a beautiful 164-page catalog that analyzes this corpus, with the participation of curator Anaïs Castro and artist François Morelli. What feast us on this astonishing and voluble deployment. Finally, the tornado at 1700 La Poste is the stuff of this artist who has just turned 40, who drinks up all kinds of reading and influences, and who has chosen to dare. Isabelle de Mévius is also partly responsible for this intrepid and galvanizing gale that swept through the art center, she who, for nearly 10 years, has never ceased to amaze us with quality exhibitions that are, each time, veritable gusts of fresh air.
