Steve Giasson, Steve Giasson as Others / Steve Giasson comme les autres — Emmanuelle Choquette

[Fall 2022]

Steve Giasson en Suzy Lake en Françoise Sullivan / Steve Giasson as Suzy Lake as Françoise Sullivan, 2021, d’après / after Suzy Lake, Suzy Lake as Françoise Sullivan, 1973–2012, Impression au latex sur vinyle autocollant sur Dibond / latex print on adhesive vinyl on Dibond, photo : Martin Vinette, retouches / retouching : Philip Gagnon

By Emmanuelle Choquette

Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa
15.02.2022 — 3.04.2022

[Excerpt]
When we enter Steve Giasson as Others/ Steve Giasson comme les autres, it’s as if we’re entering a portrait gallery in a museum: the works are hung in a single line at eye level – a succession of photographs of similar format. Comparison with a classic notion of the portrait is, however, quickly negated by the nature of the images presented. In this series of photographs, Giasson features himself replaying works by other artists who are usually associated with performance, such as Marina Abramovic ́,DouglasGordon,SuzyLake, Paul McCarthy, Luigi Ontani, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Haim Steinbach, Sturtevant, and Andy Warhol. In this exhibition, he continues his research on art history – more particularly, that of performance and conceptual art – using his own body as medium. Although he has been exploring these issues since 2015 with his Performances invisibles, in this body of work he evinces a desire to update his approach by addressing the figure of the artist and how that figure’s myth is staged…

Emmanuelle Choquette is an author, researcher, and curator, with a master’s degree in art history from the Université du Québec à Montréal. She explores the articulation of political, institutional, and performative spaces in an installation practice that generates a critical gaze at exhibition formats. She is also interested in how artists appropriate archives as sites of resistance.

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS ]
[ Complete article and more images, in digital version, available here: Steve Giasson, Steve Giasson as Others / Steve Giasson comme les autres — Emmanuelle Choquette ]