Nicolas Fleming, 2017. photo : Josée Pedneault

Nicolas Fleming, 2017. photo : Josée Pedneault

Room 2

Nicolas Fleming

Une causeuse, un distributeur d'eau, un vase.

EXHIBTION /
JANUARY 11 TO FEBRUARY 17, 2018

OPENING /
THURSDAY JANUARY 11, 8PM 

ARTIST TALK /
SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 3PM

As Georges Didi-Huberman wrote, “Art does not imitate space […] it produces its own site – its own laboured site, its fabled site – […]1" Nicolas Fleming’s exhibition Une causeuse, un distributeur d’eau, un vase (a loveseat, a water cooler, a vase) does indeed draw our attention toward the production of an original site. In keeping with his practice, Fleming has created a new construction in CLARK’s Salle 2 in the form of a large-scale installation filled with sculptures and paintings, reminiscent of a domestic interior that seems to have been set down whole in the space.

Entering through the front, the viewer penetrates an environment where objects, such as a loveseat or a water cooler, are covered with drywall and plaster. The walls are made of sheets of OSB (Oriented Strand Board), a material normally used as a sub-layer for walls, floors or roofs. These materials, so strongly tied to the world of building and construction, are at the core of Fleming’s work. The role they play in evoking a particular effect is important, much like with Robert Gober’s work. As Gober states, “Part of the task is to find the appropriate material, if there is one, that makes the work resonate in a way that another material might not help it to.”2 In Fleming’s work, the material gives the installation an unfinished feel. This aspect calls on our imagination, to reflect not only on the artistic process, but also to activate other possible interpretations, as if there was something left to finish.

Fleming, who works with building materials when installing exhibitions for other artists, transgresses their traditional role by using them for their aesthetic value within his own art practice. The material’s functional character is therefore transformed. Viewers may find themselves instinctively reaching for the water cooler, only to stop short, suddenly aware of how their actions correspond to certain objects. Unable to use the object, they instead focus on its composition, texture, and colour, and are transported toward a “specific sensorium” that “suspends the usual connections, not only between appearance and reality, but also between form and matter, activity and passivity, understanding and sensitivity.”3 The viewer may notice that the drywall was been painted in its original colour, therefore nullifying the material’s unfinished character. The objects are not hidden but rather transformed, remixed, and unveiled differently.

For their part, the paintings are made of scrapped materials left over from previous exhibitions, either Fleming’s or other artists’. As decorative elements, these drywall paintings create a kind of infinite regression, a mise en abîme with the material of the walls on which they are hung. These spaces are apparently distinct: there is the work of art, the gallery, and the other exhibitions, all assembled here to form a single, complex and vibrant place that invites the viewer to imagine "the infinite variations of what already exists.”4

- Paule Mackrous (translated by Jo-Anne Balcaen)
 

1. Georges Didi-Huberman, Génie du non-lieu. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 2001, p.34 (Translation ours). Original: « L’œuvre n’imite pas un espace […] elle produit son lieu – son travail du lieu, sa fable du lieu – […]

2. Jarrett Earnest, "Robert Gober With Jarrett Earnest", The Brooklyn Rail, December 2014,https://brooklynrail.org/2014/12/art/robert-gober-with-jarrett-earnest

3. Jacques Rancière, Malaise dans l’esthétique, Paris, Galilée, 2004, p.21 (Translation ours). Original : un « sensorium spécifique » qui « suspend les connexions ordinaires non seulement entre apparence et réalité, mais aussi entre forme et matière, activité et passivité, entendement et sensibilité.

4. Boris Groys, On the New. London : Verseau, 2014, p.51 

 

Nicolas Fleming holds a Master’s degree in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2007). Since 2013, he has gradually combined his experience in the field of construction with his artistic practice, developing an aesthetic that foregrounds the use of drywall and plaster. In 2014, he presented his first monumental drywall installation at ISE Cultural Foundation (New York, 2014). Since 2013, he has presented solo exhibitions in Canada at Bunker 2, L’Œil de poisson, TYPOLOGY Projects, Maison des arts de Laval, Galerie Trois Points, AXENÉO7, and Galerie McClure. His outdoor sculptural works have been presented as part of the Festival Aires Libres (2014) and Truck Stop (2017).

The artist would like to thank the Centre CLARK and Atelier CLARK team, Saada El-Akhrass, Drywall Nation, BRUTgroup, Marc Nerbonne, Gabriel Morest, Phu Bui, Robert Gober, Mike Kelley, Rupert Residency and the Canada Council for the Arts.