Jannick Deslauriers | Tornado at 1700 La Poste

Surprising exhibition by Jannick Deslauriers at 1700 La Poste, where she begins a new creative cycle with an impressive and talkative installation. The director of the Griffintown art center, Isabelle de Mévius, hit the mark again by granting an artistic residency to the Montreal artist who was able to set up her be imaginarya rather… staggering corpus.

Bearing in mind the usually seductive and delicate work of Jannick Deslauriers, with its large vaporous textile works, one is completely confused when one enters 1700 La Poste and sees a real apocalyptic scene in the main room of the art center . But what is this installation stick insects that she took a month and a half to create on site?

Walking through the “rubble”, we can make out the remains of child’s strollers, dusty swings – with their safety 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 carousel skeleton. During the press visit, the journalists exchanged their impressions. Is it a horribly ransacked daycare (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 which was present and which is no longer”, said Isabelle de Mévius, who sees in stick insects a way for the artist to “find and restore the world of his childhood”.

Jannick Deslauriers explains that stick insects results from a turning point that has taken place in his practice since his 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 original idea

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 says. 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 traces 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, stick insectsnamed after this mimetic insect that mimics its surrounding nature by recording its physical memory.

Instinctive work

Each will interpret stick insects in his way. It remains that this instinctive work is remarkable. When we pass to the basement – ​​where his crinoline float is – and on 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 her 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 from all sorts of readings and influences, and who has chosen to dare. Isabelle de Mévius is also partly responsible for this intrepid and galvanizing gust of wind that swept through the art center, she who, for almost 10 years, has never ceased to amaze us with quality exhibitions which are, each time, veritable gusts of fresh air.

be imaginaryat 1700 La Poste, until June 18