Jeremy Laing

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MutualitySusan Hobbs Gallery
November 27, 2025 to January 10, 2026 Read Framework 12/25, Stevie Manning on Jeremy Laing, published by Susan Hobbs Gallery.
Conditions are given, inherited. At an artist’s residency, a chair is assigned. A body presses into it, met with soft, spongy, injection-moulded resistance, parabolic in form, ergonomic in ambition. A specific but unspecified body (maybe mine, maybe yours) assumes the place of the “universal” body the chair hopes to account for, takes a seat, learns how to be, how to structure itself into the shape of an ideal, pressed into the mould by the weight of the world. In ways that are prefigured yet unpredictable, it leans back, adjusts the seat height, scoots around a bit, gives it a twirl.

Conditions are given, inherited, but not inevitable. As much as the chair is moulding, it is itself moulded, a recursive circularity of entwined ideals and manifestations. Chair and body; mutual foils; shaping and being shaped, shaping and being shaped; no positive, no negative; no master, no replica.

Conditions are given, inherited, but not inevitable, and certainly not immutable. Repetition begets variation, hard edges wear away, definitions blur, the mould cannot hold. The shifting contour of its emptiness is the basis for resistance, a plane of emergence for new elaborations.

—Jeremy Laing This ceramic work in this exhibition was realized during a residency in the summer of 2025 at the European Ceramic Work Centre, in the Netherlands, with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Additional support for the work in the exhibition was provided by the Toronto Arts Council and Partners in Art, while exhibition assistance was provided by the Ontario Arts Council. 

Documentation by LF Documentation and Toni Hafkenscheid.

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