2024 | FRANÇOIS LACASSE
RENVERSEMENTS
MONTREAL
Jan 20 - March 9, 2024

Blouin Division is pleased to present Renversements, a solo exhibition of new works by François Lacasse. 

It is within his highly personal visual universe that Lacasse explores and pushes the boundaries of the familiar. By means of an artistic practice approaching scientific inquiry, the artist experiments with, records, and recreates his materials and processes, thus testing the limits and possibilities of his world. Lacasse’s paint pouring technique is a fixture of his process, the results of which are perpetually transmutable and suggestive of new directions.  

In this new body of work, Lacasse was led by a fascination with positive and negative space and how they can be communicated either directly or indirectly through the material qualities of paint. Negative space is, for instance, here created organically as numerous thin layers of translucent paint wash over each other; the “voids” left behind become windows into the history of the painting, revealing traces of earlier layers. Yet, in other parts of the same composition, these gaps, as a result of the build-up of layers, form defined borders in which paint more easily pools and becomes raised in appearance. The final effect is an optical play between liquidity and solidity, ambiguity and definition. 

The nebulous quality of Lacasse’s work, evading a single description, can be attributed to how he is guided by the principles and qualities of nature. Each work thus becomes a microcosmic encapsulation of elemental forces. Although the forms in the compositions often resemble subjects such as water, air, cells, pebbles or planets, this imagery is never intentionally depicted. Much like how the natural world mysteriously creates uniform patterns, by relinquishing some control over the artistic process to the laws of nature, recognizable forms spontaneously occur and yet never fully take shape. In this tension between control and release, the artist is both creator and witness to the principle of creation. 

As a viewer, you enter this amorphous space. While seeking the familiar, you get relaunched into a fluid universe that beckons you to accept conceptual uncertainty and experience through sensation instead.