In 2012, Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Bryan-K. Lamonde collaborated on The Twofold Room, a book-object linking philology and architectural form. This book took the reader on a journey following a horizontal line; a line starting with a red carpet, breaking at the reception desk, deploying itself endlessly in a hallway, and folding at the bedroom, where suddenly another appears, as it is, evidently, a double room. The Twofold Room explored the loss of identity caused by moving from one language to another as well the nightmare of interconnected elements slowly drifting apart.
At YYZ, Deschamps and Lamonde prolong their exploration of language as an inhabited space, a key element of their respective practice. They once again play with the material properties of words, letters, and signs, and use them as spaces to collapse, conceal, or inhabit; all the works acting as translations of our experience of the world of objects and forms — a world that we experience physically, but which is also wholly contingent upon language, it being in fact an inhabited space of language.
With Better Times, a simultaneous opened-ness and closed-ness acts to unsettle through a default of décor, to question whether there is any content separate from the process or means of revealing.
Artists Bios
MARIE-MICHELLE DESCHAMPS
Marie-Michelle Deschamps is an artist based in Montreal, Quebec. Her work focuses on the ambiguities of deconstructed language and its transposition in signs and objects. The elusive signification exhibited in her drawings, sculptures and sounds works allow for figurative, abstract, and literary interpretations. She holds an M.A. from the Glasgow School of Art. Recently, her work was presented at MUDAM, Luxembourg (2017); Ausstellungraum Klingenthal, Basel, Switzerland (2017); Darling Foundry, Montreal (2016) and Glasgow International, Scotland (2016). In 2018, Deschamps will show her work at Diagonale, Montreal and at Parisian Laundry, Montreal.
BRYAN-K. LAMONDE
Bryan-K. Lamonde is a graphic designer based in Montreal and one of the co-founders of Principal. Working in the realm of contemporary art, his approach has allowed him to collaborate, to create new approaches and to dialogue with numerous artists that share his concerns that are located at the crossroads of art and design. In addition to working with Deschamps on The Twofold Room (2012), he also contributed installations in the exhibitions L*, at the Darling Foundry (2016), Montreal and at Galerie UQO, Gatineau (2016).
Why don't I understand?
Why don’t I understand?
It is useful to describe from the outset her way of working. After a period of conceptualizing often involving complex topological design, Deschamps initially makes models of her works with paper.