Few artists make work that is so stubbornly resistant to language – to description or to reference – as Vincent Fecteau. The painted papier-maché constructions that Fecteau has produced since the early 2000s really look like nothing else on Earth.
Some commentators have noted their formal debt to the biomorphic sculptures of Henry Moore or Alexander Calder, or the tabletop marvels of dollhouses or maquettes for avant-garde stage sets, or to runway fashion or interior design, or to the milieu of pop cultural collage and assemblage which was Fecteau’s background when emerging in the 1990s. But such associations do little to illuminate Fecteau’s relationship to his work, which arises from a deep openness to the surprise of making, and an abandonment of pre-existing understandings of what shapes or objects might signify.

“Language is a major part of the way we negotiate the world, but it’s not the only way we think,” Fecteau has said. Rather, his sculptures are a concrete manifestation of his thinking through space, his pursuit of the unknown and his curiosity about the limits of perception.