Curator: Marie Fraser

The Darling Foundry is proud to present a solo exhibition surveying the work of Toronto-based artist Luis Jacob, the first chapter of his Canadian tour. Curated by Marie Fraser, the exhibit Luis Jacob: Tableaux Vivants features a constellation of works produced in recent years as well as a new installation created especially for this project.

Album VIII (2009) consists of hundreds of images culled from a variety of sources. The images are mounted together in plastic-laminate panels hung sequentially in the form of an “image bank” or an Atlas. Through processes of visual association, the images of Album VIII compose a proliferating narrative around various themes: mapping, construction and the manufactured “sub-conscious”, embodiment, the fabrication of worlds, and the possibility of transformation. Making its Canadian debut, Album VIII was previously shown at the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen (Germany) and the Limerick City Gallery of Art (Ireland).

Also on view are a series of photographs entitled Evicted Studios at 9 Hanna Avenue; November 1999 (1999) that depict various disused spaces in an old industrial building in Toronto, which until the end of the 90’s had provided artists and artisans with studio space. The spaces were captured soon after the building's occupants had been evicted to allow for the redevelopment of the site; they appear in various states of tidiness or chaos, registering remnants of their former occupants' lives and, at times, their anger at being forcibly evicted. First published in the book Money Value Art: State Funding, Free Markets, Big Pictures (YYZ Books) and shown in the offices of the Toronto Arts Council, these images reflect upon the transformation of urban environments worldwide, and resound within the Darling Foundry, itself a reminder of Montreal’s industrial past, which has been born anew.

For this exhibition, Luis Jacob has created a new installation that takes the form of a gallery-within-the-gallery. Within this newly built space - a “white cube” gallery with one glass wall – viewers will see a group of twelve monochrome paintings displayed the degree-zero of the pictorial tradition associated with the painting as tableau. Seen from the outside of this space through the glass wall, viewers will become part of a tableau vivant that points to our shared presence in the gallery and the conventions of viewing that orient aesthetic experience.

This exhibition inaugurates a touring survey of Luis Jacob’s work. The next chapter, itself uniquely conceived, takes place in February 2011 at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto.

The artist and the Darling Foundry would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for its support to the project.