source: typologyca

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.

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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source: jannickdeslauriers

Jannick Deslauriers was born in 1983 in Joliette, Québec. She lives and works in Montreal and teaches visual arts at Marie-Victorin College.

One of the particularities of our era is that we literally wish to get to the root of things. In seeking to grasp the very essence of Nature, we create a troubling confluence between the works of Nature and those of Art. Human touch may now intervene in the creation of living forms, thereby attaining the most fundamental elements of life. This touch is even able, in some novel and perverse way, to mark these works of destruction and death with a fatal beauty and almost intolerable purity. Humankind has thus created a difficult and dangerous communion between Nature and Art, between what the Greeks termed physis and technè. These hands, this touch, now pray to the reflection below. What these hands previously sought to attain above, they now seek below, reaching for the fragments of what hope remains.

Jannick Deslauriers’ work is a testimony to the poetry of our times. She expresses the helpless vulnerability we may feel when faced with the grace and beauty of created forms, which are at once disturbing and astounding. The same hands simultaneously both weave a story and unravel it. Elements from Jannick Deslauriers’ work create a discourse between fear and dreams, between civility and death, between harmony and conflict, between fantasy and horror. Her work expresses a dream which enables us to comprehend fully the contrasts inherent in our human condition and which allows us to understand our true nature.
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source: jannickdeslauriers

Jannick Deslauriers est née en 1983 à Joliette, Québec. Elle vit et travaille à Montréal et enseigne les arts visuels au Collège Marie-Victorin.

Notre époque a ceci de singulier qu’elle veut littéralement toucher le fond des choses. En saisissant de nos mains les racines génétiques de la nature, nous opérons une inquiétante rencontre entre les œuvres de la nature et celles de l’art. Désormais, la main humaine intervient dans la genèse des formes vivantes, jusque dans les particules les plus intimes de la vie. Elle est même capable, par une perversion inédite, d’imprimer une scandaleuse beauté et un insupportable raffinement à ses créations de destruction et de mort. Voilà que l’homme vient d’opérer un périlleux mariage entre la nature et la technique, entre ce que les Grecs nommaient physis et technè. Nos mains supplient maintenant vers l’envers du ciel. Ce qu’elles montraient là-haut, elles le veulent maintenant toucher dans la racine des choses, y saisir les vestiges de ce qui reste encore à espérer.

L’œuvre de Jannick Deslauriers témoigne de la poétique de notre temps. Elle exprime le vertige que l’on peut ressentir devant la grâce et la beauté vénéneuse des formes fabriquées, tantôt inquiétantes, tantôt merveilleuses. Ces mêmes mains humaines qui cousent et qui tissent l’histoire, qui défont et qui torturent la vie. Les éléments de l’œuvre de Jannick Deslauriers composent une dialectique de l’angoisse et du rêve, de la délicatesse et de la mort, du ciel et de la guerre, du fabuleux et de la terreur. C’est un rêve qui, en nous donnant à voir cette étrangeté que nous sommes, nous éveille peut-être à nous-mêmes.
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source: westcollection

Jannick Deslauriers is concerned with the collusion between human nature and art – a fragile conversation that has been whispered, spoken, and ultimately shouted over the course of art’s history. Employing a mass of translucent fabric and dark colored thread, the artist’s latest realization of this complex and, at times, fragile relationship is captured in a group of sculptural installations. Deslauriers lives and works in Montreal, Quebec.