Dana Lok, Laure Prouvost, Mia Goyette at Bianca D’Alessandro

Artists: Dana Lok, Laure Prouvost, Mia Goyette

Venue: Bianca D’Alessandro, Copenhagen, Denmark

Date: June 2 – July 8, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Bianca D’Alessandro

Again she asked if I had ever seen a musical tree, and my response was to say:
‘Your question begs a story.’
And what was to be her story?
She spoke of a tree that stood close by what was, for a week, her dwelling place. She said it was a tall tree. She said it was what you would call a pine-tree. She spoke of how each evening a hundred small brown birds would congregate in the tree and make a loud commotion. She said others staying near by would complain. A racket they said. A din. But she would listen, and as she did, the noise became a daily refrain.

She told me that the hundred small brown birds could not be counted for as they congregated they became indistinguishable from the pine-cones that issued from the tree. She said that you could not tell where bird began and pine-cone ended. Looking at the tree – and look she did – no winged beast could be clearly seen. All that could be seen was an agitated tree quivering sonorously: a twittering-tree. She told me she had wondered if the birds had set out to imitate the pine-cones. She said that she had wondered but had also found herself asking questions about imitation itself. She said that she had to ask: ‘Are not cases of imitation always tottering on the brink of self- destruction? How can something imitate something else without what is imitated itself becoming something else? With imitation don’t both imitator and imitated become something other that what they are?’

She said that as the week passed her thinking had also started twittering.

‘… It’s not that small brown bird is transformed into equally small brown pine-cone but rather that there is a continual passing from one to the other. That it cannot be told where one begins and the other ends has the effect of making both become other than what they are whilst remaining, in one respect, what they are. This becoming is no production of an imitation; rather, what is produced is a zone of indiscernibility …’ Yve Lomax from the publication ”Sounding the Event: Escapades in Dialogue and Matters of Art, Nature and Time”, 2004.

Bianca D’Alessandro is proud to present “Dana Lok, Laure Prouvost, Mia Goyette” containing works by artist Mia Goyette, Dana Lok and Laure Prouvost.

Goyette, Lok and Prouvost share a specific curiosity towards stretching the viewer’s perceptions of reality and of the objects at hand in the gallery. A recurring use of collage technics along with humorous and absurd elements can be found in all artists’ oeuvre together with an interest in addressing or even poking at the spectator. By playing with conventions of language, image traditions and our habitual readings of visual representations – or in a more hands on fashions by distorting the appearance and function of domestic items, architecture, nature and the human body, each work actively blurs the border between different domains. This approach both illuminates the limitations and opportunities inherent in each form of expression whether it be film, sculpture, architecture or painting. At the same time the artwork is shown to be deeply interconnected with other physical and nonphysical structures, hereby also the invested desires of the viewer. But this interlacing and mimetic approach does not help us to determine the origin of things or its position within a network of objects, but rather invest the artwork with it’s own logic and leaves the spectator in a state of unrest and uncertainty.

Dana Lok, Laure Prouvost, Mia Goyette, 2017, exhibition view, Bianca D’Alessandro

Mia Goyette, The prospect of an end [*TP3161/W.1.4404/TP316/W1.440…], 2016 , Concrete, cast ceramic, tinted epoxy resin, various debris, PVC-coated aluminum pipes, aluminum hardware, Dimensions variable

Mia Goyette, The prospect of an end [** WO* (SYSTEM:DVGW W543*DW-8501B…], 2016, Concrete, cast ceramic, tinted epoxy resin, various debris, PVC-coated aluminum pipes, aluminum hardware, Dimensions variable

Mia Goyette, The prospect of an end [*DVGW-GW541/DV-7301AT2558 **…], 2016, Concrete, cast ceramic, tinted epoxy resin, various debris, PVC-coated aluminum pipes, aluminum hardware, Dimensions variable