“I was trying this morning to figure out how one could think without words. A noble desire, I thought… I tried to stop this inner language that keeps rolling like a reel, and something else stopped, too. I faced blank space. I stared intensely at the windows across the courtyard, moved my eyes north, south, sideways. I found myself stroking walls with my glances and establishing no connections. I became a pure vision of surfaces… But when I tried to put words aside, for good, I ended in a painful state of being: surfaces hypnotized me, and, in front of an orange, I didn’t know how to behave.” – Etel Adnan
Chris Andrews is pleased to present the two-person exhibition, “Three and a Half.” This marks Gilles Jacot’s first exhibition in Canada, and Calla McInnes’ third presentation with the gallery.
The exhibition borrows its title for the regional term for a one-bedroom apartment: three separate rooms (bedroom, living room, kitchen), plus a bathroom (the half). The exhibition traces the inclusion or exclusion of language in the artists’ respective practices, and converges around the collapsing of interior spaces – whether by flattening the observed world onto an image plane or an assemblage floorplan. Through the different ways of inhabiting spaces for living, two ways to flatten a room emerge.
A painting by Calla McInnes features a figure in profile about to dine, their fork and knife poised for a bite. McInnes’ included works follow the artist’s ongoing meditations on the formal characteristics of disassembling perspective, panoramic vision, and architecture through dense layers of material and gesture.
Gilles Jacot’s collaged assemblages delineate floor plans for nondescript Parisian apartments. The artist furnishes them with few sparse lofty words collected from discarded lottery cards, drawn placeholders for appliances, and sections of vinyl flooring often seen in rushed renovations. Elsewhere on the gallery floor sits Jacot’s sculpture composed of a tartan paper cup with an abstracted metal form affixed to its top. The affixed words, “Souple, Généroux, Convivial, Adaptable...” fill the potential spaces for living like manifestations for the years spent within them.
Eating dinner is the same as hanging a painting. The same for furnishing a room. What if you hang the painting behind a pair of chairs? I saw that on the train once. One third of the frame was interrupted by leather headrests and it looked fabulous. Right above the bed? It would be the first thing you open your eyes to in the morning. What about really low on the wall, its bottom touching the trim?
Gilles Jacot (b. 1990) lives and works between Zurich and Paris. He holds an MFA from Basel University of the Arts FHNW, and a BFA from Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK. Selected exhibitions include Neuer Essener Kunstverein, Essen; Schiefe Zähne, Berlin; Swiss Art Award, Messe Basel, Basel; Hamlet, Zurich (all 2024); Sentiment, Paris; Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; sun.works, Zurich, Borgenheim Rosenhoff, Basel (all 2023); Hamlet, Zurich, and Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (both 2022).
Calla McInnes (b. 1998) lives and works in Montréal. They graduated from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2020. Recent projects include solo exhibitions at Chris Andrews, Montréal (2023), Gated, New York (2022), as well as group exhibitions at Shower, Seoul (2024), Pangee, Montréal (2024), and Chris Andrews, Montréal, (2022).
