Diaz Contemporary presents the first Canadian exhibition of emerging Belgian artist LeonVranken. Currently engaged in an ongoing project wherein he has recreated selected objects from the domestic interiors of a private home, Vranken shows sculptural and photographic works from this series.
The Garden with the Two Forked Paths is made up of a series of framed photographs, and wallmounted sculptures. The images show the interiors in which Vranken has worked to carefully mimic select objects; seemingly random and banal household elements have been chosen, carefully and exactingly replicated, then displayed neighbouring the originals in their domestic settings.
The photographs capturing these inserted replications escape the potential for near anthropological posturing or ironic distanciation by themselves looping over into the realm of the sculptural through the artist’s framing choice. Each image has been ensconced behind glass edged with diminutively decorative scroll-work frames noticeably stained reddish-brown. The homey, rural cousin of the cool, white, pale wood, or aluminum frames generally found supporting wallworks in galleries, these frames pull the images back into the realm of the bourgeois interiors in which they were originally taken, creating a sense of complicity or desire for direct dialogue.
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