Genesis Belanger Coaxes the Uncanny from Vignettes of Consumption and Gluttony

A comb with completely manicured tooth, a tote overflowing with groceries and a bitten chocolate cookie, and a vacuum cleaner intent on consuming a rug are just a few of the peculiar particulars in Genesis Belanger’s newest exhibition.

Within the Proper Situations we’re Indistinguishable, on view now Tempo Gallery in London, presents fourteen vignettes of on a regular basis life gone awry. Recognized for her disorienting, typically seductive sculptures, the artist continues working together with her signature flatness and distinctive visible language, drawing on promoting strategies to critique consumerism plaguing fashionable life.

Belanger’s earlier sculptures enjoy pastel hues and the nice and cozy textures of ceramic, whereas this new physique of labor is extra expansive. Daring, saturated colours seem all through the person vignettes, like on a cobalt vase and vibrant pink fruits resting in a squat dish. The artist additionally incorporates a wider array of supplies into these sculptures, together with the silk cashmere lining a vacuum cleaner bag and the veneered plywood that constructions shelving.

Arousing humor and absurdity from essentially the most banal objects, Belanger invokes extreme need, gendered expectations, and company malaise. “Self-Awareness,” for instance, incorporates a disjointed portrait of varied objects unfold throughout a wooden desk. The candlesticks with knotted wicks reference the sensation of working a 9-to-5 job, which she describes as “burnt down and tied in knots,” whereas the tableaux as an entire nods to self-curation and efficiency.

The artist sometimes shies away from depicting the human physique in full kind, as a substitute preferring to signify it via fragmented components or symbols like meals and comely objects. Fruit usually takes on this function, particularly within the pair of spherical, potted sculptures that give credence to pure progress.

These works stand in stark distinction to the flattening impact of “16 Bit Eden,” which layers flowers and cherries atop a grid. Evoking the digital world, the pixelated backdrop questions the up to date need to disregard the objects and realities proper in entrance of us.

Within the Proper Situations we’re Indistinguishable is Belanger’s first U.Ok. exhibition and runs via November 9. See extra of her work on Instagram.