Tegan Moore

Condensations
05.23–06.22.2024
Room 2

In the middle of July, when the outdoor temperature exceeds seasonal norms, air conditioners run at full capacity. Whether in building basements, apartment windows or modern home ventilation systems, air conditioners have become ordinary commodities. Barely noticeable, they regulate indoor ambient temperature, but also emit hot air into the atmosphere. 

Suspended from the ceiling, the installation resembles a drop ceiling whose infrastructure has been exposed. The structure, which transforms the architecture of the gallery by dividing it in half horizontally,  towers over us with a formal lightness: its frail frame of hardwood offcuts in maple, oak, and walnut is wrapped in a fine fibreglass and plastic mesh that holds tiny expanded polystyrene granules that softly filter the light, like sunlight seeping through a cloud. At the heart of this construction is an air conditioning unit that has been turned on, and, as condensation is inherent to its operation, it becomes the installation’s engine. While the air conditioner should help our bodies feel more comfortable, it fails to do so here. The absorption and expulsion of heat by the unit are neutralized by the circulation of air in the room, but this also gives a haptic sense to the work.

The installation is completed by a few wall sculptures in the form of objects that embody condensation and carry notions of saturation and density. Contaminant Lung features nacre, or mother-of-pearl, itself a contaminant, while La Quotidienne et le frisson unfolds like a concrete poem composed from the letters in a roll of lottery tickets Moore found on the ground. Citadine Isolation contains polyurethane foam insulation from a new condo building nearby. In fact, the installation is almost entirely made of found materials from the Mile End neighbourhood, all carefully examined, processed, and revalued by the artist. Tegan Moore salvages ultimate waste—residual materials that persist in our environment. In this way, she processes what the environment cannot digest. By removing synthetic fragments unaltered by time, she redefines their parameters by giving them a new purpose, and in doing so, avoids having to rely on traditional methods of consumption to produce her work.

In Condensations, the gallery’s confined atmosphere is divided into gradations; we move from cold to warm, from diffuse to saturated, from permeable objects to contained objects. While the boundaries between the body and the work are blurred, Moore hopes to draw attention to the complex nature of the systems that contribute to our modern-day comfort.

— Manel Benchabane