MONTREAL.- Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran is presenting Get rid of the fabric softener, Dominique Pétrin’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. The artist presents a new body of work structured around the notion of collective work and social structures organized during labour. Known for her screen-printing practice and her use of hand-printed paper, which is cut out and then glued together, Dominique Pétrin creates immersive, monumental and for the most part, ephemeral works. Always rigorously conceived in relation to the architecture of the site, her installations are freely inspired by the frescoes of Pompeii, the history of ornament and Internet culture.

For her exhibition at the gallery, Pétrin shows a series of “quilts” that she has been working on for almost two years. Her recent reflections on the production of art objects have led her to rethink the question of traditional techniques, both from a practical and formal perspective. For her, the physical work required to carry out her installations can be considered as an artistic performance in its own right. From a formal viewpoint, the artist has striven to get rid of the ornamental, burlesque and trompe-l’œil, to simply put forth the silent force of the work. In going to the heart of her practice, Pétrin seeks to strip away all artifices in order to contemplate and lay bare the very essence of her approach.

The choice of the quilt is obviously not trivial. The technique the artist developed is very close to the one traditionally used for quilting, which basically consists of an assemblage of colourful motives determined by a selected geometry. The quilt also evokes a feminine domestic imaginary, with its codes, its histories, and political messages. Carried out during pivotal moments in a woman’s life, these works and the time dedicated to them made it possible to transmit knowledge between women of various generations within a single household or community. For this series of works, Pétrin decided to work with a group of women and, for several months, they cut out, and assembled the quilts. The repeated ancestral gestures are here sublimated, thus allowing one to understand these artisanal practices as historical testimonies and as agents of social cohesion within a community or a family.

Dominique Pétrin was a member of a petrochemical rock band named Les Georges Leningrad from 2000 to 2007. She has collaborated with Sophie Calle, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Banksy and with choreographers Antonjia Livingstone (Berlin) and Jennifer Lacey (Paris) on a performance called Culture & Administration & Trembling. This last collaboration was presented at many festivals such as Impulsanz (Vienna), American Realness (New York) and Fierce (Birmingham). She obtained numerous grants from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, leading her to residencies at the Banff Centre (Canada), in Nunavik (Canada) and at the OMI International Artist in residency Program (USA). Her work has been exhibited at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal as part of the Quebec Triennial of 2012 and has been presented throughout Canada, England, France, Belgium and the United States. She was longlisted in 2014 for the Sobey Art Award. She has recently drawn international recognition through her collaboration with Banksy on the Walled Off Hotel project in Bethlehem Palestine (2017).