Fabienne Lasserre at Parisian Laundry

Walking into Fabienne Lasserre’s exhibition Les Approaches at Parisian Laundry, I immediately envy the Brooklyn-based artist’s practice in a very physical way. I want to stretch with the shapes of her forms. I want to follow the delicate lines and gauge their tensions. Instead, I will have to make do with just looking at her work – which is in itself a pleasure.



Fabienne Lasserre, Les Approaches, installation view (photo: Guy L'Heureux)

Lasserre’s colourful sculptures fill the main floor of Parisian Laundry. Grouped closely together, it’s almost impossible to study them separately. The negative space of one sculpture provides a view onto the positive space of another. They seem to bend and stretch to one another, their colours and shapes echoing throughout the gallery. Each is grounded in its own being while sharing a purpose or conversation. The sculptures are made human scale and are relatively flat, so that they appear like paintings pulled off of their canvas and stuck freestanding in space. In some sense they evoke modern abstract painting, but, of course, it’s been undone. The works are made to look imperfect and cobbled together, using materials such as cardboard, felt, wood, steel, and linen, but with very particular attention to detail. Despite the fragility of their material presence, these objects have found their posture and sit with confidence and poise in the gallery space. The beauty of the work in Les Approches is that it is not as straightforward as it first appears. It is complicated with contradiction and ambiguity that rewards slow viewing.


Parisian Laundry: http://parisianlaundry.com/en
Fabienne Lasserre: Les Approches continues until November 28.


Susannah Wesley is an artist and curator living in Montreal. She has been a member of the collaborative duo Leisure since 2004 and from 1997-2000 was part of the notorious British art collective the Leeds13. Formerly Director at Battat Contemporary in Montreal, she holds an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and an MA in Art History from Concordia University. She is Akimblog's Montreal correspondent and can be followed @susannahwesley1 on Twitter.