Commodity First, Then Culture
As part of the Contact Toronto Photography Festival 2009, Le Labo presents “Commodity First, Then Culture,” an installation by Pascal Paquette. Drawing on concepts of simulacrum, decor, and travesty, Pascal Paquette’s work stems from social observations on the issues surrounding our contemporary culture and shared values. The piece presented at Le Labo is part of a series of in situ installations: Commodité d’abord, ensuite la culture/Commodity over Culture, exhibited in various Toronto galleries since 2003, which simulate the transformation of these cultural venues into major commercial chains. Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, Crate and Barrel, in a state of construction, pompously announce their imminent opening. Galleries and other cultural organizations yield to massive and popular consumption.
For this project, Pascal Paquette transforms Le Labo into a genuine construction site. False walls, tools, paint cans, and a soundscape suggest that the studio will become a home decor store for the American chain Crate and Barrel, newly established in Canada. Large commercial photos and outdoor signs announce the upcoming opening to visitors in the Distillery District. The choice of a design store is not innocent in the context of the Distillery, where tensions between culture and commerce are exacerbated to the point of blurring the very purpose of the location.
Pascal Paquette is interested in the moments of transition between two social, political, or economic states. The transformations societies undergo are inscribed in places, on faces, in the media, and it is the portrait of these inscriptions that Pascal Paquette seeks to render. He does not present the traces of change, but change itself and the reactions it provokes in the individuals he questions. His work, deeply rooted in current events, presents this in-between that gives meaning to or interprets the transition.
Dwellings, unknown faces, political figures, and advertising motifs are the forms through which Pascal Paquette defines and questions the movements of societies and communities that interest him. The artist engages with his subjects by reappropriating motifs that are intimate to them, either through their proximity or their popular appeal. His entire body of work is directed towards others as they form communities.
Pascal Paquette is an artist working in painting, installation practices, graffiti, and music. A graduate of the Graphic Arts Program at La Cité collégiale d’Ottawa, he works in Toronto and Eastern European countries. His work was recently presented at the Sudbury Alternative Art Fair, Gallery 1313 in Toronto, and Resistor Gallery in Toronto. He has also participated in numerous contemporary art fairs, including Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain de Paris, and Art Brussels, Brussels, with Fabrice Marcolini / Artcore.