Eight artists have gone to play at Galerie [sas] this summer. The exhibition Sculpture – Ludisme assembles the talents of Patrick Bérubé, Catherine Bolduc, Éric Cardinal, Laurent Craste, Marc Dulude, Peter Gnass, Fred Laforge, and Karine Payette. Not all of these artists usually work in the field of sculpture, but that didn’t affect the quality of the works. Despite the wide variety of conceptual approaches, each artists explores the sense of play, of breaking the rules; each work is a subtle criticism of the status quo.

My favourite pieces of the exhibition are by Laurent Craste, whose work I’ve seen at [sas] a few times now. I love his elegant, precious urns and vases which he mercilessly tortures with axes, baseball bats, and hammers. He makes a poignant comment on the Bourgeoisie by sabotaging one of its icons, the porcelain vase, which is as fragile as the upper middle-class itself. The work he presents at the Sculpture – Ludisme show are more playful than usual, even comical. Is it me, or is one of the sculptures dangling from a dart laughing at me like a little monkey in a tree?

Equally delightful is the work of Catherine Bolduc, whose sculptures are a wild and decadent explosion of fake pearls, wax, chocolate, and costume jewelry. So overloaded with strings of beads are they that the weight of the necklaces seems to crush the sculptures, turning pearls into chains. Is more always better?

And I’d also like to give a shout-out to Patrick Bérubé, whose pieces Dépendance and Dépendance 2 (part of last week’s Friday’s Favourite Four) are brilliant: two soft toy bunnies which are filled with cigarette filters. The title really says it all.

Galerie [sas], space 416
Group exhibition
Sculpture – Ludisme
June 9 – August 20, 2011
www.galeriesas.com