New work by Canadian based artist Maskull Lasserre, entitled Incarnate (Three Degrees of Certainty II), a skull is carved into old computer manuals representing the death of the printed manual. Maskull Lasserre doesn’t read the manual. But unlike any of us, he puts them in a vice grip and makes extraordinary art out of them.
The transformation of materials and the repurpose of paper is simply magnificent. This specific piece presents us the idea of transformation and connotes the essence of human body and the direction to the earth. The idea of death is evident since the fact that a book becomes a skull denotes the death of physical books and at the same time the source of our nature. We can analyse forever so keep staring at the perfection and delicacy this piece has.
“My inspiration is the unexpected potential of the most common everyday experiences, objects and materials. I am moved by the way the most mundane things can manifest all kinds of human care, worry, expectation and hope. Often this comes with a sort of black sense of humour.”
“My work is really an offering to the audience. I am happy for them just to experience it, and hopefully enjoy the journey of discovery that it has to offer. What I put into the work is what interests me, but I know it is not necessarily what the viewer gets out of it. What the audience takes away with them [is] really between them and the work.”
Maskull Lasserre was born 1978 in Calgary. He spent his early childhood in South Africa and returned to Canada to settle in the Ottawa area. He studied visual art and philosophy at Mount Allision University, and sculpture at Concordia University. He now lives and works in Montreal.
Lasserre’s drawings and sculptures explore the unexpected potential of the everyday and its associated structures of authority, class, and value. Elements of nostalgia, allegory, humor, and the macabre are incorporated into works that induce strangeness in the familiar, and provoke uncertainty in the expected.
