Artist: Fabienne Lasserre
Exhibition title: With What Eyes
Venue: Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto, Canada
Date: April 6 – May 6, 2023
Photography: Em Moor and Alan Wiener, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Zalucky Contemporary
With What Eyes presents a series of new paintings by Brooklyn-based Canadian artist Fabienne Lasserre. Following recent exhibitions in New York (White Columns, Essex Flowers, Turn Gallery), the artist continues to expand upon a visual language that prioritizes the viewer’s experience of space.
A myriad of geometric forms painted in vivid colours line the walls of the gallery, lean into corners and dangle from the ceiling. The works encroach into the space, drawing attention to certain architectural features while obstructing others. In this way, Lasserre’s abstract paintings behave much more like sculptures, coaxing the body’s perpetual movement throughout the space. As one critic put it: “As still as the exhibition is, it begs us to keep moving, keep twisting, tilting and peering.”[1]
One of the distinguishing elements in Fabienne Lasserre’s nearly thirty years as a painter is her application and activation of colour. In this latest series, undulating forms of bright colours–calibrated to maximum intensity–direct one’s eye to the surface tension and texture of her stretched and hewn panels. Coppery browns, cherry reds, and creamy mustard yellows all make an appearance in combinations that, in less deft hands, would leave the viewer disorientated. Instead, the colours harmonize effortlessly.
The vibrant palette is anchored by the industrial materials used. Steel, linen, nylon and acrylic paint – materials that have long belonged to the artist’s arsenal – are deployed here with technical acuity. They allow the paintings to reveal the mechanics of their own making, all the while refusing to disrupt the internal logic of the composition. The perceived “heft” of the works, particularly those fixed to the ground, are counterbalanced with the weightlessness of the paintings suspended from the ceiling. Here, semi-transparent vinyl surfaces framed by textured swatches of colour act like mirrors or windows that conduct light and reflect the room back onto itself. Their “empty” centres lure the eye through the work and beyond the frame– continuing, as the other works do, to choreograph the viewer’s gaze and motion throughout the space.
[1] Anthony Hawley, “Fabienne Lasserre: Eye Contact,” Art Papers, June 2021. https://www.artpapers.org/fabienne-lasserre-eye-contact.
Fabienne Lasserre is a Canadian artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She received her B.F.A. from Concordia University (1996) and her M.F.A. from Columbia University, New York (2004). She has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, throughout the United States and internationally. Notable solo projects include Eye Contact (2021, Turn Gallery, New York); Make Room for Space (2018, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY) and Les Larmes (2018, Parisian Laundry Gallery, Montreal). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions such as Magic Lantern (2022, Essex Flowers, New York); Looking Back / The 12th White Columns Annual (White Columns, New York, 2022); Feed the Meter (2017, Ceysson de Bénétière, Luxembourg); Outside the Lines (2013, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX), and La Triennale québécoise , (2011, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal). In 2017, she was awarded the Saint-Gaudens Memorial Fellowship to produce two outdoor sculptures for the grounds of St-Gaudens National Historic Site in New Hampshire. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, she is the Director of the interdisciplinary MFA in Studio Art at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her upcoming 2024 solo exhibition at the Athenaeum (Athens, GA) has been awarded substantial financial support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Her work appears in numerous private and public collections such as the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec (MNABQ), the Birmingham Museum Art collection and the Claridge Collection of Canadian Art.
Fabienne Lasserre, With What Eyes, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Fabienne Lasserre, With What Eyes, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Fabienne Lasserre, With What Eyes, 2020, Linen, steel, transparent vinyl, corrugated plastic, acrylic polymer, acrylic and enamel paint, 69 x 55 x 2 inches
Fabienne Lasserre, Night Stuck, 2023, Steel, nylon mesh, linen, hand-made linen paper, acrylic polymer, acrylic paint, 5 x 26 x 9.5 inches
Fabienne Lasserre, With What Eyes, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Fabienne Lasserre, And Came Back, 2023, Steel, linen, hand-made linen paper, acrylic polymer, acrylic and enamel paint, cotton canvas, 5 x 36 x 5 inches
Fabienne Lasserre, All Where, 2023, Steel, linen, cotton, acrylic polymer, transparent vinyl, acrylic and enamel paint, 60 x 45 inches
Fabienne Lasserre, With What Eyes, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Fabienne Lasserre, From the Mouth, 2023, Steel, linen, acrylic polymer, acrylic paint, cotton canvas, 46 x 20 inches
Fabienne Lasserre, Dream Began Red, 2020, Pigmented linen paper, copper tubing, linen, acrylic polymer, 32 x 31 x 8 inches
Fabienne Lasserre, With What Eyes, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Fabienne Lasserre, Sky Shut, 2021, Linen, steel, transparent vinyl, acrylic polymer, acrylic and enamel paint, 5 x 36 x 1 inches
Fabienne Lasserre, With What Eyes, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Fabienne Lasserre, Moon Gone, 2023, Steel, linen, acrylic polymer, acrylic paint, cotton canvas, 27 x 25 inches
Fabienne Lasserre, Listener, 2020, Steel, linen, acrylic polymer, acrylic paint, 78 x 27 x 1 inches
