La tulipe est ostensible et l’artiste trivial

La tulipe est ostensible et l’artiste trivial (The blooming of the ostensible tulip and the trivial artist) combines pictorial, sculptural, and collage compositions to expand the boundaries of the still life trope. The photographs’ starting point is the traditional still life, specifically blooming white tulips in vases. But past that, tradition shatters. An inventory of kitschy objects (a retro souvenir knife of Halifax or an eighties Micro-Lite toy microwave oven) found sculptural pieces (a black reproduction bust or an ornamental potted plant), and altered quotidian materials (rope, paper, or foam tubing) transform still lives into poetic sculptural tableaus. Alongside these are uncanny surreal elements—scraps of wigs or a disembodied plaster hand. This array of incompatible objects evokes humour, tension, and enigma. Such juxtapositions channel those magical moments of real life poetry when the unusual eclipses the ordinary. These moments raise the possibility that there may be no singular rational interpretation of the photographs, thus establishing an open-ended intersubjective dialogue between viewer and artist. Vanasse’s odd juxtapositions convey an irrationality that questions the Enlightenment’s linear logical reasoning.

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