To understand how local artists shape the material to extract their vision of the world, you have to meet them. Mise en Lumière is a series of portraits that appears every end of the month. Forays into the world of creators who work on their works in unusual ways, away from current cultural events.
A snow ice cream cone, Christmas lights in the shape of strawberries, earrings made with Froot Loops cereal or even a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates filled with Kraft Dinner: images designed by Gab Bois, 26 years old, are very literal, very first degree and always striking.
“My main goal is to make stuff that anyone could see and say, “Ah, I could have done that too!” » confides with simplicity the multidisciplinary visual artist and artistic director, who recently joined the creative team of American rapper A$AP Rocky. Her approach thus revolves around sculpture, DIY and assembly – whether these are ephemeral (food) or permanent, like the famous dress made from Scrabble pieces worn by Angèle for the magazine Elle Quebec last June.
“The more common the objects, the greater their reach can be, because they can be read in a fraction of a second. I like it when it’s instant,” says Gab Bois, who experienced dazzling success from 2016 thanks to her very “ Do it yourself » on the social network Instagram.
“Basically, I am not a photographer. My approach is intuitive. It is coolit’s the fun and it looks good, but it’s not technical,” she emphasizes. In fact, his work is oriented around an idea or a concept. “This means that my works are case by case and that they really vary each time, as much in terms of length as in terms of complexity or process,” rejoices the artist.
In her Montreal workshop on rue Lajeunesse located behind the Cité de la mode, she and her collaborators make collage one day, then another day, they spend hours beading a work. “It’s often things we’ve never done before. We learn to make things that don’t exist and that’s how we end up knowing how to make a popcorn chair,” explains Gab Bois.
She says it’s a lot about problem-solving. “It’s stimulating and satisfying to start from the abstract and obtain a physical piece,” adds the one who first follows her desires. Everything I put on my Instagram are things that tempt me. »
Although he also works on commission, with Nike, Ssence, Skims, Mejuri and Balenciaga, among others, Gab Bois never goes there reluctantly and, above all, never compromises his creativity. “My practice is very compatible with advertising and commercialism, so that’s where people can argue and say that what I do is not art… But I have never seen like antipodes,” she confides, lucidly, before conceding that her art is not “purist in its form.”
Constantly searching for a balance in this “crossroads where everything gets tangled”, she currently divides, for example, her time between the preparation of a public art installation in the United States and her mandate for A$AP Rocky, with whom she shares a rich aesthetic universe.
Full-scale
If the young woman was destined for a career as a nursery school teacher, we can see that Gab Bois’s artistic adventure nevertheless seemed all mapped out when we explore her happy youth as an only child, spent shaping her imagination and inventing games to keep you busy. “What I do today is an extension of all my childhood passions and all the things I loved doing back then. »
More handy than sporty, the artist enjoyed getting lost in long puzzle activities or threading marbles. This teen from the Tumblr generation has also spent countless evenings watching, organizing and consuming content like mood board. “With all these visuals in mind, I wanted to create my own. I didn’t even use Photoshop, but online collage software. That’s how it all happened,” she recalls. And continues: “It’s still very relevant to what I do now! »
“There’s a lot of my work that I see as a kind of homage to the object,” she explains. A bit like a compulsive archiving gesture, Gab Bois has always been collecting. “I remember compiling my parents’ metro “passes” from the 1990s and 2000s, which were made of cardboard with a different graphic every month. I loved keeping them and organizing them, and I also loved taking out all the rocks I had just to look at them,” she says. In reality, the artist loves objects in a way that has nothing to do with consumption. “I have an emotional connection with inanimate objects, I have always been sensitive to their visual quality,” she reveals.
For this reason, Gab Bois is just as keen to create works that would be more suited to a gallery presentation as to create works like those that made her famous on Instagram. “I like trompe-l’oeil. You see something, you get closer and you see something else. » In other words, the artist now wants his audience to look twice.
Increasingly, she therefore devotes part of her activities to making larger-scale sculptures and to immortalizing certain of her pieces, such as her lettuce cake, which she has just remade in silicone, notably so that it can be moved. “My work is evolving and there are always new things to learn,” she believes.
“As much as there is something beautiful about a structure being captured in photography, it is also great to be able to relate to the works, and not just through a tiny screen for three and a quarter seconds », finally indicates Gab Bois, who is already delighted that her creations can be approached, and even potentially touched and worn. “I love fashion and it has been super present in my work from the start,” she warns, while she is currently working on a model of “real” sandals made from clementines.