maskull lasserre

outliers

 

February 16-22
Opening reception : Saturday, February 18, 6pm together with the 2012 Mile End Art Map

 

Maskull Lasserre’s art inspires a sense of wonder in the viewer, while equally coming across as unheimlich – uncanny or just slightly off-kilter. His ability to cleave reactions in the viewer is what is so appealing about his sculptural work. In his own words, “relationships that are easily harmonized, ideas that have completeness in my mind, don't need my intervention in the material world. The things that are unclear but resonant, the relationships that only reconcile through motion and matter, these are the things that need to be made.”

 

Outliers – part sculptural, part performative, part documentary work – allows for a layer of interactivity only implied in previous exhibitions of Lasserres’ art. Lasserre has altered a series of standard shoes that have been fitted with rubber reproductions of animal paws. When worn, they produce tracks meant to infiltrate the urban environment, creating a dual sense of wonder and confusion for whoever encounters them. While presented at articule, the viewer is invited to borrow the shoes and create their own tracks in the neighbourhood. Documentation of the ephemeral traces left from the public in the snow will be displayed in the gallery during the course of the exhibition.

 

Lasserre resists use of the word “magical” to describe his work.  Like an outlier, his objects exist outside of normal experience, but still fundamentally belong to the same familiar realm. While Outliers differs from his other projects in form, it shares a familiar subject matter and inspiration, more explicitly invoking his interest in the distinctly natural, and the Canadian Wilderness.  Like the rest of his work “this project offers an experience that lies outside the familiar encounters of our urban environment, one that is unlikely - but significantly - not impossible.  The rare possibility that is demonstrated by an outlier is exactly what gives it the power to illuminate the wonder of normal experience.”

 

Text by Amber Berson

English Translation by Simon Benedict

 

Bio
Maskull Lasserre was born in Alberta, Canada in 1978. He spent his early childhood in South Africa. He has a BFA from Mount Allison University (Visual Art and Philosophy), and an MFA from Concordia University (Sculpture). He now works out of studios in both Montreal and Ottawa.