Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present collaborators Christian Giroux & Daniel Young’s first exhibition with the gallery.
For Cosmos, Alouette & ID CSP the artists have emulated the forms of space satellites, reproducing them as full-scale sculptural models. Taking communication satellites as embodiments of the ethos of the nations that developed them, the artists chose a single Cold War-era Russian, Canadian, and American satellite design to reproduce, thereby creating a phenomenological overview of the aesthetics of that fraught time.
Working from artists’ impressions, declassified schemata, and archival photographs as palimpsests of the actual military equipment they purport to represent, Giroux and Young conceived of each reproduction in a different form; Cosmos manufactured from steel, Alouette created from powder coated aluminum and PVC, and IDS CP built out of PVC, aluminum tubing, and vacuum formed styrene.
Young and Giroux have reproduced the satellite endeavours of the two Cold War superpowers and their Canadian neighbour on a 1:1 scale—much larger than that usually associated with models. These works appear as if they might be pre-production prototypes, but created well after the fact of their actual production, they garner post-production status, entering them into the realm of homage and confabulation. With a military complex frequently perceived as overblown and self-serving, these works become taxonomical investigations into the aesthetics of international political, social and economic structures as reiterated in sculptural form.
 
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