Jean-Pierre Larocque | Glades

Taking us into a dreamlike world of ceramics, charcoal, and drawings, the artist’s work is nothing short of a spectacle of shadows. His process is informed by a curiosity for the possibilities of the chosen material: “Working in the studio is a true adventure”. A piece takes shape without preconceived ideas by exploring a theme and develops through a series of transformations. The resulting works are both witnesses to and the residue of the experience of these metamorphoses. For Jean-Pierre Larocque, the process, the movement of ideas, playing with and thwarting the material, is the adventure culminating in a completed work.

From large charcoals—genuine x-rays haunted by moving apparitions—to anonymous heads, horses carrying their mysterious baggage, and large abstract “vessels”, Jean-Pierre Larocque creates a whole world of pictorial invention. Concerned with temporality, blending eras, costumes, and masks, his characters evade explanation. Their identities are multiple, difficult to define and elusive. They ask questions without offering answers. The exhibition is an opportunity to follow them, to look at them at length. Allow them to tell their astounding odyssey in a language of clay and charcoal.