Karsh Award Review 2014 - Winner Chantal Gervais

Effectively playing on chiaroscuro and volume, Chantal Gervais explores our perceptions of identity with relevance, in her exhibition Surgery without Anesthesia: Chantal Gervais’ Corpus. Her photographic work highlights the way we look at ourselves using technology, our relationship to the body, and the way we look at ourselves in art. By removing unnecessary ornamental filters exposing the raw sensitivity and strengths of human nature she is challenging convention, questioning our aesthetic, and pushing forward to a new pure idea of beauty.

Gervais was selected by a jury of her peers as recipient of the 2014 Karsh award for her outstanding work in a photo-based medium. It was presented to Gervais on Sept. 12 at the opening of her solo show, at the prestigious Karsh-Masson municipal gallery in Ottawa’s City Hall. Local recipients are chosen every two years. Gervais pieces are a representation of her portfolio encompassing decades of work, offering context to her evolution of expression.

The photos are hung along the outer walls of the gallery, with the use of two floating walls partitioning rectangular spaces in a u shape providing ease of access and circulation through the space. Her larger pieces relating to the body encountering the viewer first. The sequence follows to her mid sized pieces of last moments of her fathers garage. After the last partition are the smaller photos of the delicate mollusks, closing with the Vitruvian Me video installation. She created an environment which encapsulates flow of movement with an intimate energy.

Upon entering the gallery the first piece entitled the Vitruvian Me makes a bold statement. It is showing, in large volume, images of the body in an abstract visual context. Her approach is rational, naked and repeatedly exposed she is capturing the total mechanization of life rationally. Using various images to form one, it plays with concepts space and time and our perception of the body. She is encompassing a new visual culture. Instead of classical Vitruvian ideals of proportion as beauty, she is stripping back to what is natural, exposing and re-exposing herself to find her truest form. A modern ideal that breaks with traditional images of beauty. This sets the tone letting viewers understand she is reaching for an evolving aesthetic

Gervais next pieces use an MRI machine to reveals her insides with a beautifully haunting expression of the self. The photos produced by the mechanical tool are pure images free from decorative or ornamental bias. They are uncovering the self peeling back the layer leaving an understated or free from appendage. The image is seeing through the layers of beauty to the grotesque, which then becomes beautiful yet remains utterly absurd. This work is an original orchestration of a violently naked rough image made by precision.

Setting it across from large images of frailty and raw beauty with bodies exposed not for their classical beauty but revered and exemplified for their fearless audacity and simplicity. They are retaining their personal agency, while capturing their frail vulnerability coming out of the darkness. These are Gervais older works from the collection, offering perspective into her development.

The work then becomes slightly smaller and personal connecting with Chantal Gervais as she invites viewers into her fathers garage as she is packing it up after his death. She shows the grief through stillness in a dynamic space without movement. The absence of the owner is present. She is perhaps questioning how much of ourselves are we in our treasures. Are tools are an extension of ones persona? Are these perceptions of the self? What is the relevance of collections with the absence of humanity?

Gervais then moves onto her smallest most intimate pieces. The very disturbing and uncomfortable aesthetic is created using muscles to resemble female genitalia. The soft malleable curvaceous creatures are laid out in a grouping of photographs massing them into an arrangement of a grander scale. Naturally inspired, these photos are based on the shared elements between very contrasting creatures. Her perspective offers a unique two dimensional sense of identity both individually and collectively. She is attempting to make a clear representation using composition and non objective art.

The show closes with a video installation of Vitruvian Me reminding us to move past a dictated singular view of beauty to repeatedly look for beauty within ourselves. Looking for the essence of self through the physical leaves viewers with an open conversation surrounding a new universal aesthetics.

As recognized by her peers on the Karsh jury, Gervais is effectively adding to a legacy and dialog of art in the community. Her work is progressive, and exchanges relevant ideas that are worth exhibiting. Adding to the language of how we look at ourselves, Chantal Gervais show is stimulating and provocative. Her lens captured a wonderful representation of our relationship to beauty, self and the world, allowing us to rethink our own perspectives and reconstitute them creating new forms of thought.