“Maskull Lasserre is the Mike Tyson of the Canadian art scene”—so begins “Subject to Gravity,” an interview in our Fall 2012 magazine with the rising Montreal sculptor by critic and Canadian Art contributing editor Isa Tousignant.
That comparison between an artist and one of the boxing world’s most notorious heavyweights may seem unlikely, but, as Tousignant explains, it’s the right-left combination of delicate wonder and destructive potential which pervades Lasserre’s work that brings Tyson to mind—not to mention that the artist is a boxer, too.
Whether creating a working guillotine that doubles as a medical stretcher, building a custom stringed attachment for a revolver, or offering the steel form of an upright piano crushed by a boulder, Lasserre brings a curiosity for performance, spectacle and danger to his sculptural objects.
It’s a bid to upturn expectations of natural force and universal harmony, as evidenced in this slideshow recap of Lasserre’s recent practice.
