La tulipe est ostensible et l’artiste trivial

Jun 2022

La tulipe est ostensible et l’artiste trivial

The blooming of the ostensible tulip and the trivial artist

La tulipe est ostensible et l’artiste trivial (The blooming of the ostensible tulip and the trivial artist) Exhibition

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Mayten’s Projects is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by emerging Quebec City-based multimedia artist Alexis Vanasse. Titled La tulipe est ostensible et l’artiste trivial (The blooming of the ostensible tulip and the trivial artist), the exhibition comprises a series of seventeen colour inkjet prints and three sculptures that combine pictorial, sculptural, and collage compositions to expand the boundaries of the still life trope through engaging, poetic imagery.

With their richly coloured monochrome backgrounds, interwoven sculptural compositions, and jarringly unusual juxtapositions of objects, these are powerfully graphic compositions. The photographs’ starting point is the traditional still life, specifically blooming white tulips in vases. But past that, tradition shatters. The photographs contain an inventory of kitschy objects common to thrift stores: a retro souvenir knife of Halifax, a worn cowboy boot, and an eighties Micro-Lite toy microwave oven. There are also found sculptural pieces, such as a black reproduction bust (bandaged in reflective safety fabric). Then, there are altered quotidian materials: foam tubing, rope, and paper twisted and crumpled to transform still lives into eccentric sculptural tableaus. Interspersed are uncanny surreal elements, such as scraps of wigs and a disembodied plaster hand. This array of incompatible objects evokes humour, tension, and enigma. Embodying these qualities is a horizontally stacked row of crab shells topped with a tiny, pink potted plant ornament. Such juxtapositions poetically channel those magical moments in real life when the unusual eclipses the ordinary. Ephemerality also drives this exhibition. One witnesses a flickering flame and a crumpled paper tower structure that could collapse at any time.

Most crucially, though, the photographs are cryptic, leaving them open to the viewer’s interpretation and thus developing a dialogue, or intersubjectivity, between the viewer and the artist. To establish this open dialogue, Vanasse presents provocatively odd juxtapositions that are jarringly irrational. This irrationality questions the values of the Enlightenment—the Age of Reason—which has led us, with ordered, logical linear scientific advancement, to the brink of climate disaster and nuclear war.

- By Earl Miller, June 2022