Mesure of an attitude in the form of an adverb / Mesure d'une attitude sous forme adverbiale
with Jen Aitken et Jean-François Lauda, Battat Contemporary, Montreal, 19.02 - 04.04 2015.
When the vowels
and the diphthongs are
opaque or translucid,
the consonants stay
transparent. Configurations
of color and of space
barely glimpsed. Echoes
of a tongue whose signs
resist sense. “It was simply a matter
of meeting this phrase.” The subject
never leaves its grammatical
glow. The small words
that can't be altered
fix objects, and quotations
when so labeled
cause short circuits
“It was only a matter
of recognizing this sentence,”
the one we didn't know*.
The exhibition explores a selection of works that use language as either a deconstruction or reconstitution process to question our hermeneutic habits. Viewers are invited to contemplate different approaches related to language as employed by the three artists (spoken, encoded, literary, visual, architectural). Measure of an attitude in the form of an adverb is preoccupied with two ideas: shifts or 'slippages' in the composition of oeuvres and articulating the vocabulary of loss of meaning. Linguistic ambivalence is presented through the multiple methodologies of these artists by leveraging the material and formal characteristics of their chosen medium.
Jen Aitken offers us a set of works in which the rhetoric of architecture and the constant search for forms combined in infrastructural constructs unique to the artist. By taking paper crafts and their transposition into composite objects as a starting point, the artist suggests sculptures metamorphose depending on one’s point of view. Aitken’s practice develops a visual vocabulary that questions the relationship between objects and their referents, but also the disjunction of a visual language that is searching for new directions.
For her first major project at the gallery, Marie-Michelle Deschamps unveils a new series of sculptures in enamel and plaster reliefs. Interested in issues of translation and enunciation - their instances of dislocation and transposition - the artist prompts us to question our ideas of construct by metamorphosing paper studies into three-dimensional objects. The notion of transfer is central to Deschamps’ practice and it is in the context of this sustained engagement with the transformation of both language and matter that the artist now exhibits pieces whose scrambled sources become interpretive trails at once figurative, abstract and literary.
The idea of surface as a site of exploration, a space for the vocabulary of the artist, is constantly revisited in Jean-François Lauda’s work. Playing with a set of encoded motifs, the artist presents compositions that highlight process. His pieces bare traces of a language that is perpetually being redefined. Process leaves its mark on Lauda’s surfaces in his explorations of a codification that’s become distinctive to his practice. Thus, from one work to another, the viewer is confronted with the echo of surfaces, a dialogue that operates through the use of a fragmented language upheld in his painting.
*HOCQUARD, Emmanuel (2012 [2003]). The Invention of Glass, translation by Cole Swensen and Rod Smith, Ann Arbor (MI): Canarium Books, p.14-15
**Ibid, p.9. The title of the exhibition refers to an excerpt of text from Emmanuel Hocquard’s L’invention du verre (The Invention of Glass). Concerned with the properties of vernacular language, their incongruity, opacity and possibilities, Hocquard examines the disjunctions in language and contexts in which it is employed.
with Jen Aitken et Jean-François Lauda, Battat Contemporary, Montreal, 19.02 - 04.04 2015.
When the vowels
and the diphthongs are
opaque or translucid,
the consonants stay
transparent. Configurations
of color and of space
barely glimpsed. Echoes
of a tongue whose signs
resist sense. “It was simply a matter
of meeting this phrase.” The subject
never leaves its grammatical
glow. The small words
that can't be altered
fix objects, and quotations
when so labeled
cause short circuits
“It was only a matter
of recognizing this sentence,”
the one we didn't know*.
The exhibition explores a selection of works that use language as either a deconstruction or reconstitution process to question our hermeneutic habits. Viewers are invited to contemplate different approaches related to language as employed by the three artists (spoken, encoded, literary, visual, architectural). Measure of an attitude in the form of an adverb is preoccupied with two ideas: shifts or 'slippages' in the composition of oeuvres and articulating the vocabulary of loss of meaning. Linguistic ambivalence is presented through the multiple methodologies of these artists by leveraging the material and formal characteristics of their chosen medium.
Jen Aitken offers us a set of works in which the rhetoric of architecture and the constant search for forms combined in infrastructural constructs unique to the artist. By taking paper crafts and their transposition into composite objects as a starting point, the artist suggests sculptures metamorphose depending on one’s point of view. Aitken’s practice develops a visual vocabulary that questions the relationship between objects and their referents, but also the disjunction of a visual language that is searching for new directions.
For her first major project at the gallery, Marie-Michelle Deschamps unveils a new series of sculptures in enamel and plaster reliefs. Interested in issues of translation and enunciation - their instances of dislocation and transposition - the artist prompts us to question our ideas of construct by metamorphosing paper studies into three-dimensional objects. The notion of transfer is central to Deschamps’ practice and it is in the context of this sustained engagement with the transformation of both language and matter that the artist now exhibits pieces whose scrambled sources become interpretive trails at once figurative, abstract and literary.
The idea of surface as a site of exploration, a space for the vocabulary of the artist, is constantly revisited in Jean-François Lauda’s work. Playing with a set of encoded motifs, the artist presents compositions that highlight process. His pieces bare traces of a language that is perpetually being redefined. Process leaves its mark on Lauda’s surfaces in his explorations of a codification that’s become distinctive to his practice. Thus, from one work to another, the viewer is confronted with the echo of surfaces, a dialogue that operates through the use of a fragmented language upheld in his painting.
*HOCQUARD, Emmanuel (2012 [2003]). The Invention of Glass, translation by Cole Swensen and Rod Smith, Ann Arbor (MI): Canarium Books, p.14-15
**Ibid, p.9. The title of the exhibition refers to an excerpt of text from Emmanuel Hocquard’s L’invention du verre (The Invention of Glass). Concerned with the properties of vernacular language, their incongruity, opacity and possibilities, Hocquard examines the disjunctions in language and contexts in which it is employed.
