Kelly Jazvac, Alexia Laferté Coutu, Laurence Pilon
Earthly
September 14 to October 14, 2023
Galerie Nicolas Robert Toronto is pleased to present Earthly, an exhibition of sculpture and painting by Kelly Jazvac, Alexia Laferté Coutu, and Laurence Pilon. With a unified terrestrial aesthetic that draws upon the conditions of its making, each work in Earthly provides viewers with material abstractions that purposefully fragment and obscure their references. Whether speaking through geological, anthropological, or metaphysical terms, these artificial forms embody the mood and spirit of the organic, allowing us to consider our own position as creatures of and on this Earth.
Kelly Jazvac works with plastic discards from the advertising industry Jazvac is interested in linking an environmental attunement to the evidence present in these materials: that is, certain human behaviours and attitudes that enable the climate crisis. Based in Montreal, her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (MOCA), the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the Eli and Edyth Broad Museum (East Lansing), Ujazdowski Castle CCA (Warsaw), and FIERMAN Gallery (New York). Her work has been written about in National Geographic, e-flux Journal, Hyperallergic, Art Forum, The New Yorker, Canadian Art Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail. Her work can be found in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the RBC art collection, and the Caisse de dépôt et placement Québec.
Alexia Laferté Coutu’s practice is inhabited by ideas of transference and reanimation. Her sculptures reveal a dialog between constructed histories and somatic, sensorial experiences. Based in Montreal, Laferté Coutu has studied at Concordia University, the Bauhaus Universität Weimar, and Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Her sculptures and installations have been shown in personal and group exhibitions notably at Darling Foundry, Montreal (2022), Centre d'art actuel Circa, Montreal (2021), Doosan Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2020), Unit 1 Gallery, London, UK (2019), Galerie Pangée, Montreal (2019) and Galerie de l'UQÀM, Montreal (2018).
Laurence Pilon’s pictorial and sculptural work offers a speculative visibility of paleo-ecological compositions in becoming, an imaginary space that they investigate from a queer-crip perspective. They are based in Montreal and hold an MFA from the University of Guelph (2021) and a BFA from Concordia University with Great Distinction (2015). Throughout their academic background, they received several awards including the Joseph-Armand-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC, University of Guelph) and the Betty Goodwin Prize in Studio Arts (Concordia University), and their current program of work is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Their most recent solo exhibitions include A Scape Unnamed (Galerie Nicolas Robert, 2021), Holo(geo)biont (Galerie Nicolas Robert, 2020) and It Once Was a Garden (Galerie McClure, 2018). Pilon's work is part of the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Hydro-Québec, the Royal Bank of Canada, and Medcan, among others.
