Lysanne Larose

Visual artist / Artiste visuelle

A mostly self-taught ceramicist who favours handbuilding techniques, Lysanne Larose is an emerging Canadian visual artist who works in Montréal / Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang, Québec. 

Practice / Pratique

Lysanne views her practice as an act of resistance; resistance to the shallow glassy surfaces of contemporary life, resistance to the oppression of standardization, monetization, corporatization and key performance indicators.

While she primarily works with clay, Lysanne does not hesitate to borrow materials and techniques from other practices. In her works, she might incorporate rusted metal found in a vacant lot, broken glass sourced from a car mechanic, or rock dust from a stone carver’s air filters. She applies commercial flocking or paint to further enhance contrast – and sometimes even injects some sly wit into her artworks.

Below are her current projects: The Erratics, and The Metallics.

The Erratics

In her Erratics project, Lysanne is currently exploring the evocative forms and surfaces of glacial erratics (boulders and rocks ferried by glaciers and scattered across the landscape at the end of the last ice age). The intention is not to perfectly replicate a mossy granite boulder, but rather to offer up a multi-layered interpretation of these wandering rocks and the contexts in which they are found.

This project is to be eventually presented as an installation that positions it in overlapping contexts: geological and geographical (the Canadian shield, ice ages); ecological (soil creation; role of cryptograms as ecosystem health indicators; plant identification); cultural (Western literature; Indigenous legend); athletic (the start of rock climbing in Canada); and allegorical (forced migrations of people and animals).

Lysanne received a Canadian Council for the Arts grant for a residency abroad for this project in 2022, and is being mentored for all of 2024 by artist and gallerist Sam Harvey (Harvey Preston Gallery, Aspen, Colorado) to further develop this body of work. 

The Metallics

The Metallics (see some images below) are a growing collection of wall-mounted and freestanding artefacts that appear to have been spontaneously birthed from postindustrial decay.

Somewhere in a city, among quietly decomposing factories and alleyways littered with broken glass and graffiti, something has woken up and come alive. What are these artefacts being left in the rubble? What is their function? Are they messages, beacons, prayers, pranks? Who might decipher them?  

Inspired by a found piece of rusted cast iron machinery, The Metallics are a set of high-contrast sculptures that add a dash of magical realism to the tenets of postindustrial art. The viewer is invited to come up with their own interpretation. 

The Metallics were exhibited in a curated group show in July 2023 curated by Beatrice Shilton, and at a self-organized show with a fellow artist in April 2023.