September 2006
Controversial twin artists together at last!
Opening Reception: Friday, September 1, 2006 from 8PM to midnight
Moncton-born, Ottawa-based artists Jason St-Laurent and Stefan St-Laurent will present new works at La Petite Mort Gallery from September 1 – October 5, 2006. For the first time, they will be exhibiting their works side by side.
In the exhibition entitled “Portrait Gallery”, they explore their favourite theme of commemoration through a variety of media: performance, photography, drawing and video.
In his video series Che, Vladimir and Mao, Jason St-Laurent collaborates with ants, who slowly eat away at his clear sugar portraits of Che Guevara, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, popular icons throughout the world. Referencing Andy Warhol, propaganda and kitsch memorabilia, this series is a tongue-in-cheek homage to both the resilience of communism and the animal kingdom. Interestingly, an army ant can have as many as 700,000 members in its colony, an eerie reminder of the power and control of governments and their leaders.
Stefan St-Laurent employs the help of many gay men to create photographs of cum shots. Decontextualized, the ejaculations look more like an abstract expressionist endeavour than conventional portraiture, as the penises are edited out to show only a display of white liquid suspended in time. Anonymous but incredibly intimate, these portraits are titled from the first name of each participant, who is caught in-between recognition and invisibility.
In the gallery’s front windows, the twins have conceived a video installation that will be sure to stop traffic on Cumberland Street at night. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to discover two artists like no other in Ottawa.
Jason St-Laurent (B. 1974 in Moncton, New Brunswick) is an artist and curator based in Ottawa. He studied fine arts at the Université de Moncton and the University of Toronto. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States, South Africa and Finland, notably at the Western Front in Vancouver, VertexList in New York City, the South African National Gallery Annex and MUU MediaBase in Helsinki. As a curator, he has presented more than 50 projects in Canada, South Africa, Mexico, Finland and Estonia, including SCATALOGUE: 30 Years of Crap in Contemporary Art at Galerie SAW Gallery, Voices in Transit at the Cape Town Central Train Station in South Africa and Videogram International Media Art Exchange through his current position as Programmer for SAW Video. Jason St-Laurent is a founding member of the art and design collective Code régional and curator of Electric Fields: Electronic Music and Media Forum. He will be part of the upcoming exhibition Kitchen Party at Third Space in Saint John, NB
Stefan St-Laurent (B. in Moncton, NB in 1974) has a Bachelor of Media Arts from Ryerson University in Toronto. His performance and video-based work has been exhibited in various Canadian and international galleries and museums, including YYZ Artists’ Outlet in Toronto, Ottawa Art Gallery, Western Front in Vancouver, Centre national de la photographie in Paris, Nova Scotia Art Gallery in Halifax, Edsvik Konst och Kultur in Sollentuna, Sweden and the Centre d’art contemporain de Basse-Normandie in France. His video Stand By Your Man won Third Prize at the WRO Biennial in Wroclaw, Poland in 1999. As part of The State of Video Art (ICA Moscow), his videos toured in 12 cities in Russia, and as part of The Best of Video Zone Biennial (Museum of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv), his work toured throughout China in 2004. His curated media-based exhibitions have shown at institutions such as the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, the Lux Centre in London, the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montréal, the Tranz-Tech Media Art Biennial in Toronto and the Centre de production Daïmon in Gatineau. He was the Programming Director of the Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie (1993-2000) in Moncton and Programmer of the Images Festival of Independent Film & Video (1997-1999) in Toronto and Curatorial Intern at V Tape (1999). He was also a board member of V Tape (1999-2002), a collective member of PleasureDome (1999-2003) and continues his involvement with the collective Code régional, which he co-founded in 2000. He has been the Curator of Galerie SAW Gallery in Ottawa since 2003.
Merci,
Guy Berube, director
La Petite Mort Gallery