Dessicated Root Text
Paul Chartrand – 2022 – études vivantes
“In his living text installations, Paul focuses on the ephemeral nature of life, the written word and art itself. Everything we know will eventually return to the Earth, but before that happens, it will be part of an assemblage, a web, a community.”
Desiccated Root Text, 2021. Mixed grass seed, hydroponic grow medium, vapour barrier, wood, open-cell foam, polycarbonate. 77”x50”x5”.
About the Artist
Paul Chartrand
Paul Chartrand engages with environmental and cultural issues through the construction of sculptural assemblages. He builds these projects from carefully chosen and assembled objects, which he then populates with living plants. Paul considers the meaningful roles of each discrete part as functioning, living entities that possess their own unique forms of agency. Individually, plants, inanimate objects, or human actions may appear mundane, but when framed in the context of thriving and interconnected webs of being, they become members of a community. In his living text installations, Paul focuses on the ephemeral nature of life, the written word and art itself. Everything we know will eventually return to the Earth, but before that happens, it will be part of an assemblage, a web, a community.