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A Look at Diane Landry

École d'aviation (Flying School)

SolwayJones

990 North Hill Street #180, Los Angeles, CA 90012

January 12, 2008 - February 23, 2008

Although middle aged, Quebec-based Diane Landry just recently acquired her MFA at Stanford. Her exhibition at Solway Jones is her first show and there is only one piece in the gallery, École d'aviation (Flying School).

Basically, the sculpture is twenty umbrellas opening and closing using makeshift kinetic devices, bobbing and swaying back and forth as if in a breeze. Actually, if the ad hoc constructions of John Bock or Jessica Stockholder were set into motion, it might look like Landry’s work. The piece, as it gracefully proceeds, creates a series of beautiful tonal passages. Everyone in the gallery was enchanted by the proceedings.

Often kinetic work suffers from a lack of purpose, but Landry’s work dazzles in its economy and whimsical beauty. The mechanisms which drive the work, although exposed to the eye, are never intrusive. Instead, the small engines add a vulnerable, itinerate quality to the proceedings, and the umbrellas simply carry on, in earnest and complete in their imperfections.

- Ed Schad

(*Images, from top to bottom: Diane Landry, École d'aviation (Flying School), January 12 - February 23, 2008; SolwayJones, École d'aviation (Flying School), 24 umbrellas, harmonicas, motors, steel, halogen lamp, MIDI controller, computer, 8 in. x 24 in. x max. height 87 in., ceiling projection: 40 x 40 feet, Photo by Angela Jones, Courtesy of SolwayJones, Los Angeles. Diane Landry, École d'aviation (Flying School), January 12 - February 23, 2008; SolwayJones, École d'aviation (Flying School), 24 umbrellas, harmonicas, motors, steel, halogen lamp, MIDI controller, computer, 8 in. x 24 in. x max. height 87 in., ceiling projection: 40 x 40 feet, Photo by Angela Jones, Courtesy of SolwayJones, Los Angeles. Diane Landry, École d'aviation (Flying School), January 12 - February 23, 2008; SolwayJones, École d'aviation (Flying School), 24 umbrellas, harmonicas, motors, steel, halogen lamp, MIDI controller, computer, 8 in. x 24 in. x max. height 87 in., ceiling projection: 40 x 40 feet, Photo by Diane Landry, Courtesy of SolwayJones, Los Angeles. Diane Landry, École d'aviation (Flying School), January 12 - February 23, 2008; SolwayJones, École d'aviation (Flying School), 24 umbrellas, harmonicas, motors, steel, halogen lamp, MIDI controller, computer, 8 in. x 24 in. x max. height 87 in., ceiling projection: 40 x 40 feet, Photo by Diane Landry, Courtesy of SolwayJones, Los Angeles.)

Posted by Ed Schad on 2/10/08

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