L’étendue de ton état : ni l’une ni l’autre de ces postures ne pourra définir la vue que tu décrivais

Two things: something has to go down – like a body in free fall; and you need good shortness of breath.

The shortness of breath caused by endlessly running around in circles to train yourself, will bring about the fall. The arms towards the sun, the sun dripping on our arms, will shorten our breath. 45 degrees of body temperature, 45-degree angle against the wall, 45 degrees, I say, repeating constantly. We might even see the ceiling of the gallery split open to offer us this falling thing, the sun perhaps.

That said: the training, the bare belly, the chairs, the squat, the noise, the displacements, the eaten apple, the drool on the ground, the precarious balance, the detached trousers, the stepladder quickly climbed, the cleaning, the entrance (which is also the exit) of the gallery, the plexus, the belly, again, again; Oops! … I Did It Again by Britney Spears, Bashir – maybe – and the damn sun, are just tiny fragmentary things before Gabrielle falls.

Second thing: everything that goes up comes down and, inversely, everything that goes down comes up – like arms rising to the sky before descending to the earth.

In the absence of a free fall, a long descent to dusk. Her ability to bear the sky and the sun, until the moon sets. During this time, the precariousness of the body undergoing the endless training of a sprinter without cardio, an athlete without muscles.

Until the last ray of the sun whispers in the artist’s ear:  ‘Just fall.’

Then – failure, falling and, finally, twilight.

– Text by Steven Girard

Biography of the Artist

Born in Quebec City in 1986, Gabrielle Desrosiers first studied stage design at the Saint-Hyacinthe Theater School (2007), Visual Arts at Concordia University in Montreal (2014-2018) and then at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (2017). Upon completion of her Bachelor’s degree, she was the recipient of the Irene F. Whittome Prize in Studio Arts 2018.

Gabrielle Desrosiers lives and works mainly in Montreal. Since 2014, her work has been presented in Jerusalem, Italy and Quebec. She has participated in creative residencies and events including at Natashquan as well as in Montreal at the Art Matters festival, Zone-Homa, Usine C, VAV Gallery, Eastern Block, Gham & Dafe, Project Space, Dare-Dare and the Skol Center for Contemporary Arts.

Her interdisciplinary practice is characterized by an intuitive collection of images, objects and fragments. It is defined primarily by performance and installation with multiple elements combining various mediums. She simultaneously uses sensorial qualities, humour, symbolism and formal elements. Her work provokes a kind of discomfort by misleading perceptions through the navigation of precariousness, absurdity, the beautiful and the tragic, the real and the false. We do not know whether to have fun or to weep. Her current research manipulates action, photography, and video and uses materials such as paper, paint and ceramics. Through her work, Gabrielle Desrosiers does not seek to achieve a purpose but rather to find a way to bounce back.

Biography of the author 

steven girard is a (co) organizer of artistic events, an artist-performer, maneuverer and a conceptual artist. He has presented several of his aesthetic proposals including at the Visual Arts Meeting in Yaoundé in 2016; Peras de Olmo – Ars Continua 2016 in Buenos Aires; the Boston / Quebec Exchange in 2014 and at the solo exhibition ‘I’m too many to tell you’ in 2018 at the Lobe Artists’ Center in Chicoutimi. A recent graduate with a Master’s degree in Visual Art and Media from UQAM, the title of his dissertation is Self awareness: the offensive opacity of performance that questions Being and Visibility. He is especially interested in positions of geographic and institutional disciplinary peripheries, and forms of invisibility in regards to the social and the state in action art and visual art.