Michelle Allard
Page 1 | 2 | Biography
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I explore possible and fabricated conditions that evade notions of stability and constancy. Focus and negotiation is placed on progression and circulation through accumulating, layering, and reforming various quantities of common manufactured and household materials such as polystyrene, plastics, carpeting, cardboard and office paper. My work navigates around the ideas of production, 'making', material build-up, and flow. I consider the notion that everyday materials and systems, while appearing stable and knowable, often involve a vacillation of processes that defy stabilization.
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(Originally written in french by Didier Arnaudet, 2005,Art Writer and contributor to Art Texte Magazine)
With Michelle Allard… proliferation is a valued program. As soon as an item is presented it seems to multiply. This proliferation must not be confused with an uncertain abundance of criteria or an unreasonable turmoil of cells. From one angle it seems everything is openly dispersed, but from another, everything is necessarily linked.
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Drift, Polyuethane, Foam, Foamcore, 2004
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Box Cling, Cardboard, Tape, 2005
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Something in the Air, Plastic Bottles,Glue, 2005
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It's about opposing unification and centralization, which are often dead ends and barriers preventing all forms of extension and development, the occurrence of a changing multiplicity, of which the workings hinge on ingenious relationships and conjunctions. As such, proliferation develops according to an organizational principle, which first responds to technique and aims to resolve practical problems brought about by accumulation and extension, and also doubles its poetic impact with its extremely varied and strange echoes. Organization is not considered a negative phenomenon of disruption, exploitation or deadlocks, nor as a pathological sign of something bad which requires treatment and could be cured or improved with the correct therapy. It is a positive phenomenon, which can and must serve as a pressure point for offers of exchange, reciprocity and negotiation. However, you would be wrong in thinking that this organization makes things simpler. All is clear but nothing is obvious; all is rigorous but nothing fixed; everything is there but out of reach. Michelle Allard exposes us to a world of memories, dreams, drives and fantasies. A world where everything is crystallized—both organic and inorganic, determined and indeterminate, the flow of substance and vague energy.
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You have to accept the difficult relationship between significance and insignificance to understand these endless harmonies, which are created when two opposing poles are brought together and shed light on each other. On the one hand there are those indefinable shapes which can seem abstract and subject to multiplicity as a result of which they can also appear to be imprints of a certain violence.
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Chair Slag, Cardboard, Packaging Foam, 2006
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On the other hand there are shapes that we can identify, which break away from obscurity and, strangely, become the beginnings of fiction. Some seek space, take it in and then continually throw it away again like a runner trying to catch his breath but continues to make every effort to push himself on.
D.A.
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