Feb. 9 to March 9, 2013
Opening reception at Exchange on Germain, 117 Germain St., Feb. 9, 5-7 p.m.
Walk and Talk with the artist, 117 Germain St., Feb. 10, 1-4 p.m.
Third Space Gallery presents Maskull Lasserre’s Outliers, an interactive, sculptural, performative and documentary exhibition that promises to engage Saint Johners in the acts of creating and encountering the unexpected.
For this exhibition, Lasserre has replaced the rubber soles of standard shoes with mouldings from the tracks of various North American mammals, both predators and prey. His refashioned footwear is available for the viewing public to wear through the city centre’s streets, sidewalks and parks, leaving animal tracks in the snow. “The imprints exist as cogent evidence of an imagined animal presence that is at once real and imagined, unbelievable and impossible to deny,” explains Lasserre.
Outliers addresses expectations of utility, nostalgia, morality, value and class through objects both strange and familiar. Moose, deer, hare, bear, caribou, sasquatch and human shoes will be on display and available for borrowing at Exchange on Germain at 117 Germain St., Saint John.
An exploration of social and philosophical phenomena underpins Lasserre’s work of the material artifact. “I conceive of sculpture as both the process and material manifestation of physical thought. Material, linguistic, allegorical and conceptual elements are combined in each object through a unique alchemy of process. Through their orientation and interrelation, I explore different social and philosophical phenomena,” says Lasserre.
Maskull Lasserre was born in Alberta in 1978. He lives and works in Montreal. He has a BFA from Mount Allison University (visual art and philosophy), and an MFA from Concordia University (sculpture). Lasserre’s sculptures and drawings explore the unexpected potential of the everyday through allegories of value, expectation and utility. Elements of nostalgia, accident, humour and the macabre are incorporated into works that induce strangeness in the familiar, and provoke uncertainty in the expected. Lasserre has exhibited across Canada and in the United States, most recently at The Museum of Arts and Design, New York. His work is currently on display in a group exhibition at DePaul Art Museum, in Chicago. The artist’s work is in the collections of the Government of Canada (Transport Canada, DND), Canada Council for the Arts, and the City of Ottawa, amongst others. Maskull Lasserre is represented by Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain.
Support for the exhibition is provided by: Canada Council for the Arts; New Brunswick Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture; Exchange on Germain; and Chipman Hill Suites.
Featured image: Maskull Lasserre, Outliers, 2013
Photo by: Meghan Barton