Catherine Desroches
déliaison du corps contre le ciel
2022
Bronze, pine, plywood, lost-wax casting dust, foundry kiln ashes, foundry graphite, graphite powder, charcoal, and conté on newsprint mounted on wood panels, 85” x 48”
Artist statement
The "drawing-body" déliaison du corps contre le ciel stems from a poetic synthesis and a reaction. The creative process for this work follows Desroches' habit of responding to the connective force of poetic contemplation and its context. All Desroches’ drawings already exist in the world, and to create this drawing it was necessary to form a teardrop shaped in the same way one fiddles with dough. This project links the material reality of the foundry's cycle with Desroches' eco-spiritual approach to creation. This cycle’s remnants (i.e. ash, graphite, wax dust, bronze) are primary material and poetic mediators, which the artist refers to as "means of the immediate.” The artist always favours the use of this residue, as the nuances of metalwork and drawing come together in the directness of a shared space. Their differences reveal the coherence of their communal strength and connect in the breadth of their physical and poetic juxtaposition. This project further reaffirms Desroches’ desire to deepen their creative methodology, one that centres on site-responsive materialism and conversations about a new critical imagination guided by philosophies of ecocentrism.
Artist’s biography
Catherine Desroches is a Québec artist based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal, Canada). Their practice is motivated first and foremost by an investiture of the fundamental aspects of the creative gesture; then by the material practice of expanded drawing itself, rather than the inscription an implicit or explicit conceptual message. Through their work, they position and support spirituality and ecocentrism as fundamental modes of symbolization. Desroches is currently completing a BFA in Studio Arts at Concordia University.
