Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau are multidisciplinary visual artists based in Montreal, Canada. Their work focuses on theatricality and the choreographic; in their performance work but also in their interest in staging tableaus and working with ephemeral materials that can be said to perform through redeployment and decay. The duo’s recent works investigate the agency of objects, the material condition of the body, and the transformative potential that bodies and objects exert upon each other. These interests are informed by Chloë’s experience with chronic illness and its effect on their collaboration as well the duo’s exploration of narrative tropes from literature, theatre and television.
Recently, their work has taken an autobiographical twist, dealing with chronic disease, and how it alters the materiality of the body and affects its communication with the external world. It is important for them to show the body in action, in order to illustrate the haptic discomforts and discoveries during a first contact between two bodies ; this is why performance and video have become two of our favourite mediums, in transition from their installation works.
In partnership with Despina, the contemporary art center Diagonale (based in Montreal, Canada) and Le Conseil des arts de Montréal, have awarded Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau with a full grant to participate in our residency programme in November 2018. The research of the duo in Rio de Janeiro focused on Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector’s letter archives and also on the experimentation with costumes and accessories, which will be used in a future video performance. While continuing on the theme of chronic disease, Chloë and Yannick want to approach it from the transformation angle – a sensorial and physical phenomenon that they want to illustrate by the phenomenon of the « second skin ». Thus, the duo is interested in deepening their investigation on the elasticity of fabrics and their capacity to give the impression of transforming the body shape by these properties – until perhaps prolonging it.
Lum & Desranleau have exhibited widely, notably at the Center for Books and Paper Arts, Columbia College, Chicago; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the Kunsthalle Wien; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art; Whitechapel Project Space, London; the University of Texas, Austin; the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown; the Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto; and the Darling Foundry, Montreal. The duo is also known on the international music scene as co-founders of the avant‐rock group AIDS Wolf, for whom they also produced award-winning concert posters under the name Séripop. Their work is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.
Pictures Gallery (horizontal scrolling)
I really / I want / Time for / A lie – A lie, 2016 Inkjet on canvas, grommets, powder coated steel.
What do Stones Smell Like in the Forest?, 2018 Production stills.
What do Stones Smell Like in the Forest?, 2018 Production stills.
Is It The Sun Or The Asphalt All I See Is Bright Black, 2016-2017 Video still. Two channels 4K digital video, sound, 103 min
Chloë e Yannick at Despina, in Rio de Janeiro (November 2018)
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