Maude Bernier Chabot, "Quelque chose comme", 2022

QUELQUE CHOSE COMME
MAUDE BERNIER CHABOT
04.28 - 06.4


Quelque chose comme brings together recent and past works by Maude Bernier Chabot that reflect upon the hidden coexistence of pain and the female experience. Through a reinterpretation of the art of traditional anatomical and mortuary casting, the artist emphasises the materiality that dominates her forms. While traditional casting is otherwise used to foster learning and commemoration through a recognizable subject, these sculptures evade direct identification. The misshapen forms are more evocative than illustrative, reminding us that the material is not an end, but a continual process onto which sculpture imposes a limit.
 
Beneath the surface of Bernier Chabot’s work, the female body expresses itself through a perspective renewed by maternity. The fantasized body, producer or nourisher, now knows an unmentionable violence. The artist evokes the physical and moral tearing apart of a complex, scarred and sensual body that is systematically simplified, smoothed and flattened by the representation from which she wishes to escape. She strives to maintain a certain tension in the form, a feeling of uncertainty that situates the viewer somewhere between confrontation and conversation with the object. The density of the material brings a certain corporality to the physical reception of the work.
 
The oddly sensual and repulsive textures intrigue through their powerful vulnerability. Bernier Chabot’s carnal and animal references become blurred, as if sublimated, and in this respect they raise a constant element of doubt. The surreptitiously reassuring fragments are infused with a malaise as visceral as it is deceptive. Curious and uneasy, we think we recognize what we do wish not to see. Every orifice is an open door onto our imagination though, ultimately, the plastic reality of the objects gets in the way. From up close, the artifice is exposed. Our worst fears dissipate once we’ve absorbed the shock, so much so that, as we contemplate the work, we must acknowledge and reflect upon our own animality.
 
 
Dominique Sirois-Rouleau - Translated by Sarah Knight

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