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7/3/2013

Marie-Michelle Deschamps & Ditte Gantriis

David Dale Gallery & Studios, Glasgow

David Dale Gallery are pleased to present Standard, an exhibition of new works by Canadian artist Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Danish artist Ditte Gantriis. Exhibiting together for the first time, in addition to Gantriis’ first exhibition in the UK, Standard shows both artists working between print, sculpture and language in abstract form, hinting at use and representation.

The title of the exhibition, siphoned from a line in Roxy Music’s 1973 hymn to the banality of the domestic sublime In every dream home a heartache, is a problematic term. When the intimate collides with the notion of industrial and commercial standards, contradictions emerge within the fragile yet ubiquitous nature of these signifiers. Exploiting their familiarity and resulting malleability, Deschamps and Gantriis’ work opens up the gaps in those generic aesthetics – allowing their materials and form to act as an unspoken common language, and entrance point, each employing greatly disparate methods.

Deschamps’ industrially enamelled abstract sculptures, involving a process generally reserved as a protective finish for consumer goods and signage, stand there blank and silent. Their forms recalling boxes, signs or packaging, they wait to be decorated or emblazoned with the text or image that would make them so familiar. The walls of the space are punctuated by almost imperceptible plaster motifs, all of which are created using a scaled-up version of an erasing shield, a tool designed to erase prescribed shapes in technical and architectural drawings. These marks, suggest current use of plaster, as a concealer and a material to repair. In erasing physical imperfections through a template this process of industry, through the forms it creates, recalls traditions of fresco or stucco used as ornament and decoration in architecture. Language, underlying most of Deschamps’ works, is here subject to a process of deconstruction and abstraction, as it is mainly the material properties of words, letters and signs that interest her– using them a space to collapse, conceal or inhabit.

Ganrtiis’ large wall based works further investigate the medium of corporate or commercial aesthetic. Utilising industrial soundproofing boards, common in so many offices or shopping centres, Gantriis reworks them with imposing brushstrokes. Using a combination of digital and hand produced marks, she further obfuscates the intent, hiding the gestural act for it to become subsumed back into the bland background it originated. Existing between the setting of these boards and the artistic act forced upon them, the works become a tautology of self-referentiality, constantly referring back to a confused parallel history – neither the commercial nor the artistic can emerge.

Both artists work in abstracting the commonplace, and shifting focus on the familiar. Somewhere between forgetting a punchline and hiding an answer one commonplace is transposed to arguably another.

Marie-Michelle Deschamps (b.1980 Montreal, lives and works in Glasgow and Montreal). Deschamps graduated from Visual and Media Arts, UQAM, Montreal in 2007 and with an MA from Glasgow School of Art in 2012. Recent exhibitions include: Master Readings and S, M, L, Espace Saint-Valentin, Lausanne, Switzerland, both 2013; Sans Impatiences, UQAM, Montreal, 2012; Life-Size (solo), articule, Montreal, 2011; Eaux Vives, Jardins Bellenau, France, 2011. Deschamps has upcoming exhibitions at CIRCA (solo), Montreal and Intermedia Gallery (duo), 2013.

Ditte Gantriis (b.1980 Copenhagen, lives and works in Copenhagen). Gantriis graduated from The Funen Art Academy in 2007 and with an MA from The Danish School of Design in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include: Casual Friday, Peter Amby Gallery, Copenhagen, 2013; Company, Green Is Gold, Copenhagen, 2012; Service, Toves Galleri, Copenhagen. 2012; Anything, or indeed nothing, will do, ANTECHAMBER, Copenhagen, 2012. Gantriis has upcoming group exhibitions at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, 2013 and St. Gertruds, Malmö, 2013.

David Dale Gallery & Studios is an artist led organisation with charitable status based in the east end of Glasgow. Established in 2009, David Dale Gallery & Studios hosts an innovative year round exhibitions and events programme that promotes pioneering contemporary visual art. David Dale Gallery & Studios also provides artist studio spaces within a supportive peer group community. The organisation has a commitment to providing opportunities and supporting the development of early career contemporary visual artists, curators and writers.
David Dale Gallery & Studios are supported by: Awards for All, Creative Scotland, Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Life.

Preview: Friday 8 March | 19:00 - 21:00

David Dale Gallery & Studios
161 Broad Street, Bridgeton, Glasgow
Hours: Thurs – Sat | 12:00 – 17:00
Or by appointment
Free Admission

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