floater

source: vanartgallerybcca

Canadian artist Jeff Ladouceur’s massive inflatable sculpture Floater spans the columns of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Georgia Street façade. Created to coincide with the current exhibition KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime Comic Video Games Art, the large-scale installation of a cartoon-like body intertwined in the Gallery’s pillars, draws on the artist’s celebrated work as an illustrator. Constructed of inflatable polyester cloth.

Born in Nanaimo, Canada, in 1975, Jeff Ladouceur currently divides his time between Brooklyn, New York and Vancouver, British Columbia. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including In Full Cry, New Image Art, Los Angeles (2007), Tinyvices, Colette, Paris (2007) and On-Line: Contemporary Drawing, Sonoma State University Art Gallery, California (2006). He has had solo exhibitions in Paris, New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Montréal and Brussels. His work has been featured in The Believer, Kramer’s Ergot, Harper’s, Border Crossings and The Walrus. L’Oie de Cravan press has published Ladouceur’s books Schmo (2004) and Ebola (2002); a new title is scheduled for release by the same press in 2008.
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source: artspace

Canadian artist Jeff Ladouceur has a cult following for his meticulous draftmanship and his distinctive mix of melancholy and humor. The inhabitants of Jeff Ladouceur’s meticulously rendered universe are a motley bunch, “always in metamorphosis,” according to curator Jordan Strom.

New York Times critic Ken Johnson writes: “With a finely pointed pen in black ink and a meticulous touch, this Vancouver-based artist draws cartoons about a bald, long-nosed, sad-sack of a character called ‘Schmo.’ Our hero’s struggles with ordinary existence and surrealistic encounters with cloud-creatures, tiny elephants, octopi, and an abominable snowman are funny, weird, and touching.”

The artist has said about his work: “I’m not making a comment; it’s more like an emotional snapshot, little scenes. It’s just coming from the back of my head to my fingers, and then at times, there is an idea or disjointed narrative, but that’s open to interpretation. I keep mine to myself.”

Ladouceur has had solo shows at galleries including ZieherSmith, New York; Richard Heller, Santa Monica; and Galerie Georges-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois, Paris. His massive inflatable sculpture was featured at the Canadian museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery. Group shows include those at The Hole, New York; White Columns, New York; and Tim Barber’s traveling exhibition, Tiny Vices. His popular series of books include the sold out Ebola.
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source: whitehotmagazine

Jeff Ladouceur rarely draws a figure purely at rest or totally alone. His characters tension bends them toward what (or who) is around them. Is it anxiety that shapes them? I expect that Ladouceur wouldn’t agree to that with a straight face – but a strength of his art is that he wouldn’t dismiss deep themes either. His drawings occupy the gray area that true art inhabits: his work is deep fun. The drawings are rooted in the viewer’s vague notion of the rubberiest cartoon world that, actually – when you go back to look at the source – never approached being this elastic. But pulsating in the center of this perfect “Terry Toons” episode is someone making highly personal art – Ladouceur’s characters buckle in front of us as they stretch out because they speak the language of the heart.

Ladouceur is currently putting the final touches on drawings for a solo show that opens May at Zieher-Smith Gallery (516 W. 20th Street in Manhattan.) He’s also raising funds to produce his own art book, viewable here. While Ladoucuer is primarily known as an artist who shows in galleries, he says of art books that “perhaps the greatest way to share the work, and to make the most amount of images and ideas available and affordable to the most people, is to publish a handsome volume that people can hold,view and enjoy at their leisure.”