For the November showing in Closet Gallery, Montreal artist Lucas Regazzi will share an evolving photo installation called A dinosaur toy grows in a glass of water.

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A dinosaur toy grows in a glass of water by Lucas Regazzi
20 – 24 November, 2017

Once a day, over the course of five days, the curator will mount an image on the wall. Its print will grow incrementally, eventually swelling and spilling over structure, questioning itself, liberating me from _______________, or ______________ from me.

It is a canonical addressee of my family’s memory. I gather my mom thinks the picture very adorable, or illustrative of something important. I grew up alongside it, always writhing its way into portrait displays on the walls of every home we lived in.

I was with my aunt and my cousin at African Lion Safari–an open air zoo in Southern Ontario–where we came upon a wet, concrete play park on the grounds. I really loved to swim as a child, however I was ill equipped to do so in this instance; I hadn’t any trunks to change into. My aunt suggested I go swimming in my underwear, and so reluctantly I removed my clothes. I was captured, contemplating my predicament, lounging in horror at the sight of my body. I’m not sure it was this way really, but in my head, the kids watching me were laughing, aghast.

I was listening to a podcast recently that said emotions don’t uncontrollably happen to us. Rather, our emotions are constructed through cultural methods that sculpt our affective responses. At the domestic site, in the presence of such a powerful truth–this photograph–my position on myself must have shifted. What could have faded away absolutely was rehashed over and over again over time. I am now sheepish and uncomfortable, in most clothes and in general. I often feel abject in my body.

Katherine Hubbard once pointed to the ministry of language as if in an attempt to augment its authority over sensation. As an artist dealing with the photographic, I gather Hubbard is concerned with the ethics of capture. Being is slippery and does not wish to sit (nor does it fit easily) inside of the confines of the frame, its invisible cage. A dinosaur toy grows in a glass of water contemplates the plights of containment.
About the artist

 

Lucas Regazzi (b. 1995) is an emerging artist, curator and poet based in Montreal, Quebec. His work has been recently featured in the Haunt Journal of Art at the University of California, Irvine and Montreal-based publication Bad Nudes. Aside from maintaining an artistic and curatorial practice, Lucas is the sitting Art Director for the Void Magazine at Concordia University, and will be receiving his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Photography and Art History from the institution in 2018. website twitter instagram