Propos décousus

Though her practice retains the language and methods of quilting, Karen Grenier reflects on how a certain type of textile work can be redefined. Whatever means are put to use in her creative work – garments or tags, real or digitally reproduced fabrics, creations in textiles or on paper –, in every case it’s the quilt itself, as a way to envision and produce the work, that is the main motif of her approach.

In her exhibition entitled “Propos décousus”, the artist presents the results of her work with tags that she discovers inside garments and collects. When she cuts the threads that link the tags to the garments, she frees the tags from their requisite usefulness and allows them to totally reveal their materiality. Thus they attain other levels of meaning and perception.

Karen Grenier’s work with garment tags has developed along two axes, each one maintaining a strong link with the procedures of quilting. Her small scale works put tags to concrete use as materials in combinatorial sets that create unexpected exchanges between them, on formal as well conceptual levels. In her large scale works, she prints upon fabrics her photocopied and expanded images of garment care labels, thereby revealing their material and formal strangeness, which would otherwise go unnoticed.