︎

ALLI MELANSON



Bizarre Objects 
Mock Suns 
Make your home in Me, as I make mine in You
Current
Altération Générale
Perfect Empathy
 But looking back, ah never!
 Here I am Again
 Attention
 c. Why a second door?
 Blush!
 Ignition 18
 Bistro
 Seep State
This dialogue which happened to be present in all previous dialogues



Contact
Mark







Bizarre Objects

city
Glasgow

22.03.2025 - 06.04.2025



I would never go again. No way. And I would definitely not recommend it. So not to my taste. No. Like I wouldn't tell someone, “oh go to Glasgow, go see this show”. No. You feel you could be anywhere. You could be anywhere. Yeah, it has nothing to do with Glasgow. Irrelevant to The City. I guess in a way Glasgow was a working industrial city. That would be the only sort of relationship that I could attribute to that. Yeah. The slight talk about Communism and the Soviet Union- I mean that’s the context, isn't it? Yeah, that is. I don't think that like- it's the context but if you don't know much about it, it's also okay. There was definitely a narrative. The puppets are meant to be telling a story but I couldn't get it. Yeah, it can be anything. You could attribute many things to it.

First impressions are that all these works are about labor- a lot of working, a lot of working little men turning wheels, making things happen. A lot of bells, a lot of clocks, so it’s giving like “Industrial Revolution”. Time’s ticking, gotta go to work, burn the coal. Manual, like manual labor. Very manly, lots of penises. So many penises. And the general movement of the whole thing is sort of back and forth or like round and round in this like-

Yeah, very sensual. 

Oh, sensual though, doesn't… I don't feel like it's worthy of the word sensual.

More like erect. I don't know how to explain it. Erect. And like, jerky. Yeah, very jerky, very erect and hard things, you know. Chains, metal, wheels. Cogs. A lot of repurposed toys. Everything seemed recycled. They feel like adult toys. Not in a sexual way, just like men who are bored.

The whole thing is guided by a recorded voice with a sort of Scottish accent. Was it? It was an accent. It was a Scottish accent. It wasn't a regular...it wasn't like... an American one. No, it wasn’t American. But it wasn't Russian either. Why would it be...I just feel like it was... There was a sort of accent, but it wasn't Russian. No, it isn’t Russian.

It's meant to be this immersive experience, but it's not immersive at all. It's a carpeted room with dividing white walls... It's like a rural, kind of basic gallery museum. Like it's not DIY, but this funding they're getting, it's not going to the location. It's institutional in a way that is very... janky, a bit shonky. Oh, like school. Yeah, like school. And it's just like a gallery space. It's not a theater. You know when you go to class in elementary school and there's a science fair and then you walk around all the different experiments? That's what it was like. And they were all plugged. It's like I said, the people at the front press play and then there were all these electronic sequences and switches going on at their respective times. There was no human intervention or, it feels like there hasn't been any human intervention in a long time.




  1. Stream of Life 2. Live feed from a webcam inside the kitchen of  “Dodo Pizza” pizzeria on Karl Marx street, Kursk, Russia. Dimensions variable.

  2. Non plus (The “Matrix” 1). Digital print. 600 x 850 mm. Edition of 3.

  3. Non plus (The “Matrix” 2). Digital print. 600 x 850 mm. Edition of 3.

  4. Non plus (Physical Love 1). Digital print. 600 x 850 mm. Edition of 3.

  5. Non plus (Physical Love 2). Digital print. 600 x 850 mm. Edition of 3.

  6. Non plus (Physical Love 3). Digital print. 600 x 850 mm. Edition of 3.

  7. Untitled. Spotlight, shadow (human silhouette). Dimensions variable.

  8. Here Neither. Digital print. 500 x 1990 mm.

  9. Wheels of Life (Visiting Sharmanka). Digital print of image by Jennifer Aldred and Renata Ottati from their visit to a local attraction. 300 x 205 mm.









Mock Suns

Montréal

Andrew Hoekstra and Alli Melanson

21.12.2024, 8-11 PM

... from the third hour (9 am) until midday, we saw left and right from the Sun what looked like two other Suns: they did not shine like the big one, but smaller in appearance and radiance they reddened moderately. Above their circle a halo appeared, shining very brightly, extending in its breadth as if it were some kind of city. Inside this circle a half-circle appeared, similar to a rainbow, distinct in its fourfold color, in the higher part curved towards the two aforementioned Suns, touching them in an embrace of the Sun. [23]


What is that? Its nickname is Sun Dog because it follows the Sun the way a dog follows a person. It is also called a Mock Sun because it imitates the Sun and sometimes seems just about as bright. Most people don't notice because the Sun is bright and you're not supposed to look directly at it, but if you shield your eyes from direct sunlight and look around the Sun on a day with cirrus clouds you can see a Sun Dog. They typically appear as two coloured patches of light on either side of the sun and though rare, can in theory be seen anywhere in the world and in any season. Many people take a picture or video of sun dogs and then notice a strange dot in the image, right here, that thing dancing around is not a UFO it's the reflection of the Sun inside the glass of your smartphone's camera lens. When the camera moves, the dot moves. You'll get that Sun dot whenever you point your camera at a very bright light, whether it is the Sun, the moon or even a light bulb in a room. See how it disappears when you get out of the Sun?


  1. Andrew Hoekstra. Untitled. 2024. Aluminum, LED Lights, Security Screws. Dimensions Variable.

  2. Untitled (Accidental Camera Obscura 1). 2024. Digital print and artist frame. 16 x 19 in.

  3. Untitled (Accidental Camera Obscura 2). 2024. Digital print and artist frame. 10 x 14 in.

  4. Untitled (Accidental Camera Obscura 3). 2024.Digital print and artist frame. 11 x 17 in.

  5. Untitled (Accidental Camera Obscura 4). 2024. Digital print and artist frame. 12.5 x 15.5 in.

  6. Untitled (Accidental Camera Obscura 5). 2024. Digital print and artist frame. 16 x 14 in.

  7. Untitled (Accidental Camera Obscura 6). 2024. Digital print and artist frame. 9 x 12 in.

  8. Untitled (Accidental Camera Obscura 7). 2024. Digital print and artist frame. 10 x 12 in.

  9. Untitled (Accidental Camera Obscura 8). 2024. Digital print and artist frame. 12 x 14 in.

  10. Untitled (Accidental Camera Obscura 9). 2024. Digital print and artist frame. 12.5 x 15.5 in.





Make your home in Me, as I make mine in You

Bonny Poon/Conditions
Toronto

12.12.2024 – 25.01.2025


“Instead of raw or achieved silence, one finds various moves in the direction of an ever-receding horizon of silence — moves which, by definition, can’t ever be fully consummated.”
—Susan Sontag, Aesthetic of Silence

Twinning Desires

The towers are containers for a defunct technology—compact discs—and someone’s presumably discarded music collection. Designed to exhibit the owner’s taste, their open shelves are invitations to be read. A CD is a vessel for vibration: a musical interjection to disrupt the day’s homogenous rhythm, and here their absence begets silence.

She has used a stand-in for herself (Arlen). I have used her work (Que soy era immaculada concepciou, 2023) as a stand-in for my work (Bad weather, flat tires, failed engines, missed connections, traffic jam, and road closures, 2024). In other times, I have circled around the concept of similarity as the crux of romance. (Beautiful Balance, 2016)
“We are very similar.” “A slave?”

Among many others, Alli has alluded to Sherrie Levine’s Newborn, and I think of Anne Truitt and Hannah Wilke at Alex Zachary—particularly with Lauren giving her talk on Ana Mendieta and mimesis on Saturday. She will sit on one side of the line, with the audience on the other. Jacob mentioned Goya’s The Third of May 1808, drawing a parallel to the hushed line of figures awaiting their fate. Simon says Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club, spilling moves and countermoves.

Spiritual Vertigo

Logistics arose as a military art: a best-practice for winning and staying alive.

We both understand this: the artist and her gallerist.

The unseen work of this work comprises hunting, running, collecting: each stage of the logistical sequence is a negotiation. Alli set out to find twenty matching CD towers from a specific era that belies our age. Each conversation produced a journey that included points of haggling; arranging of transport to and from; hauling down and up flights of stairs; mountains of favours (she doesn’t drive); riding in others’ cars between homes, between cities.

As an apartment-gallery (or apartment-gym, the other business that occupies this space), opening hours require an enormous task of logistics; of moving things around. Serenity would be to have nothing, and therefore, nothing to be moved.

For Alli’s show, Blush!, at 100 Bell Towers, she and Justin carried an industrial beverage fridge up to the third floor space, marking the strenuous upward trajectory with red carbon transfers. This is a drama of the toil: an enunciation of the labour of the protagonist; an insistence on embodied servitude and devotion to the work of art, and to a faith in higher systems.

Divine Wine

Wine is the subject of Jesus’ first miracle. This motley band of objects whose original function and place in households is now lost, are similarly bestowed with a new and sacred value. Alli has painted the tops of each tower a deep red; burgundy. The undertone is magenta, which she explains is a colour that does not exist. An imaginary view from above reveals the towers in a cross-like formation: from here (the eye of angels, God, a penthouse dweller, or a drone), only the surface of the red tops swim into focus.

A Tower is a Tower is a Tower

Inside the space, the towers mimic the outside. The gallery’s surrounding glass and concrete giants monotonously devour the city’s history and dwarf the previously imposing religious structures (2 churches) across the street. As the city self-cannibalizes, we, its inhabitants, dot the terrain like ignored agents of its metabolism.

The towers allude to the residence: of those who used to own them; of the domestic milieu of the gallerist, who resides among the sculpture, and must make her way daily around and through them to navigate ‘home.’ This detour becomes a choreography. Some days, the towers are picked up and set aside, finding unforeseen, spontaneous formations. The gallerist imagines herself a general before her army and silently commands them.

Following a subdued logic, we make a line, a cross, a grid.

Text by Bonny Poon



  1. Untitled 1-20, 2024 CD Tower, Deluxe X-Pert Interior Water-borne Alkyd Paint Semi-Gloss in ‘Divine Wine.’ Variable dimensions.



CURRENT

Weatherproof
Chicago

Jesse Benson, Alli Melanson & Sara Yukiko

24.10.2024 - 1.12.24

A fool’s errand, one that can only be marked as such after the fact. One that can whiz right by you if you aren’t decisive enough, you can’t take back a flash in the pan. Although there is a difficulty to plot it, there hasn’t been any shortage of folks who have tried to make a profession out of attempting to put their finger on it. A corollary question now sprinkled: where are you going and to what end will you continue to walk? You will pass things on walls that are now irrelevant, numerous objects of all different sizes, in a chain of descending entities that is probably endless, bearing wheels that screech around a looped track you once spent afternoons afoot–‘turtles all the way down’—maybe army, maybe navy, time with a cataract does a number on you. In our vicarious medium, they withdrew from mutual contact, and encounter each other only as translations or caricatures. Walking here was nice but it was dark and mostly quiet save for the rattle of a week-sized suitcase past bins the color of ink in the light. That noise is awful, but maybe talking would have been better to cover it up and to stop the words from dissolving into a dream-like glow of TV static. It is important to keep moving even in the weakest of states. A hero’s journey in the moonlight. You whush on by, you begin to move fast and break things, sideswiping vehicles modified with USB sticks who’s many pings illuminate a path of where you have been, your suitcase rumbling on behind you now wearing a silver patina of collected marks. You make a turn and look over your shoulder to reveal a wake of negligent scuffs. Course correct. Feeling the need to progress and obligated to carry on the tradition, wobbling like Giacometti man your limbs quivering from the collateral damage, a fascist symmetry. You trudge on past the many bungalows in the night, if for no other reason than faith, guided by the tides to finally reach the shore. The many notes scrawled out mentally and the short monologues spoken into that dinky, whirring tape recorder are revealed to be obsolete now, basking in the presence of this evening’s newly selected destination. The house gorged down into the bowel of a ship not so much in illumination as in a sincere inability to know what was down, where your core went if you lost it momentarily or which path a pin would take dropping soundlessly into blue carpet. When you are given a room away from home how many times out of ten might it be a refuge.


  1. Stream of Life. 2024. Livestream Projection of “Le Sanctuaire de Notre-Dame de Lourdes en direct”. Dimensions Variable.

  2. Transparent Eye (I). 2024. Acrylic dome, digital print. 2” x 2” x 2.

  3. Won’t lovers revolt now. 2024. 39 postcards (1 for each day of the exhibition) with the number of stamps equal to the number of galley visitors per day. Dimensions Variable.



Altération Générale

Curatorial project at Chris Andrews
Montréal 

with works by Andrew Hoekstra, John Knight, Liza Lacroix, Craig Jun Li, Bonny Poon, Jackson Slattery, Justin Tenney

26.9.2024 - 14.12.2024


Before they said Chris Andrews, the windows of this space were doubly inscribed with the phrase ‘Altération Générale’, advertising the tailoring services provided within. We’ve spent some time in this room since its name and occupation changed. We reupholstered the platform at the entrance for the inaugural show in which our work was included. We presented a solo exhibition here. As the curator of this show, we’ve organized thoughts and artworks with people holding multiple occupations within the ‘art world’.

We started thinking about a sensation induced by singing someone else’s song - a temporary transposition into the melody of another. We thought about covers and karaoke, but also about a garment previously fit to one body and altered to the shape of another. Together, we introduced ourselves to Imi and Imi, we spoke about Degree Zero, Acéphale, and the aestheticization of non-material practice, singing the songs of predecessors who were also after the empty center. We organize ourselves in proximity to movements, shapes, cultural memory – oblique angles circling towards this empty center.

There are invisible overlaps between us, we are wearing many hats - artist, gallerist, assistant, fabricator, handler, writer, performer, curator…What can aesthetic gestures say about our togetherness? We switch hats and sometimes lose our heads to the organization too. Sometimes we don’t feel our own hands. Sometimes our name is eclipsed by another of the same name. We and everything are is continually being altered and the world reorganizes itself around us.

We are interested in blurring roles, acting as proxies, sourcing and fabricating works from a distance, receiving instructions. Our own work has been restaged by another artist, so now it has 2 authors. We are beginning to think of it as our piece. Its original title translates to “I am are the immaculate conception”, a strangely pluralized utterance of immaterial wholeness by a 19th c. Marian apparition. We instructed us to build and upholster a second stage. We continue to cast actors and make use of stand-ins. We are speaking a pluralized conjugation of destiny.




  1. Liza Lacroix. Ooh stop, 2024. Playlist, eighteen songs, 56 min.

  2. Craig Jun Li. p.m. 29, 2024. Cast silicone, iron oxide, maroon oxide pigment, phthalo blue red pigment, aluminum hardware,16 x 9 inches.

  3. Craig Jun Li. p.m. 27, 2024. Cast silicone, iron oxide, silicone pigment, maroon oxide pigment, aluminum hardware, 16 x 9 inches.

  4. Craig Jun Li. p.m. 28, 2024. Cast silicone, iron oxide, yellow oxide pigment, lycopodium powder, aluminum hardware, 16 x 9 inches.

  5. Jackson Slattery. INSTED, 2024. Oil on linen, 13 x 120 (two parts).

  6. John Knigh. Tomorrow dreams away, 2024. Carpet, lumber, plywood (replica of existing gallery platform), 128 x 27 x 8 inches.

  7. Bonny Poon. Bad weather, flat tires, failed engines, missed connections, traffic jam, and road closures, 2024. Restaging of an artwork by Alli Melanson from her solo exhibition, "Attention," at the same gallery (Chris Andrews) and in the same location.

  8. Bonny Poon. Labour actions, pirate hijackings, and national borders. 2024. Recasting Arlen Aguayo as Alli Melanson, this performance revisits Alli's earlier work where she used Arlen as her double. Photograph by Justin Tenney.

  9. Justin Tenney. The Visitors 1-4, 2024. Silver gelatin print, mat, glass. 16 x 20 inches (framed).

  10. Andrew Hoekstra. Untitled, 2024. Aluminum, wallpaper from closed Hollywood bar. 48 x 11 x 6 inches.