Viviane Le Courtois Profile : Colorado Music, Arts, and Outdoors : Cairn

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Art Laced with Commentary

Written by Molly Page

Viviane Le Courtois is the kind of artist who makes art accessible. Piles of junk mail, collections of single socks and empty pickle jars are the everyday objects Le Courtois uses to tackle huge societal issues — like materialism, waste, junk food and what she calls “the invasion” of digital media.

By connecting the absurdly simple with the absurdly complex, she makes people laugh. And think.

“It’s not just in my art; it’s in my life. In my life, I try to influence everyone around me, especially kids,” Le Courtois says.

She’s exhibited her work internationally at more than 40 shows, but Le Courtois is very much a part of metropolitan Denver’s art community. A program manager at Downtown Aurora Visual Arts (DAVA), Le Courtois teaches art and manages the gallery.

Last year, she put a stop to kids bringing junk food into her art class at DAVA. She herself never touches the stuff, unless she’s using it for art. Case in point: a 5’ 3” marshmallow man sculpture at her 29th Street studio in Denver.

Le Courtois has always tied her work to societal commentary. One of her early pieces was a pair of shoes (like flip-flops made of rope) created in 1991 when she was an art student in Nice, France.

“Nice was a very snobbish, expensive city. A lot of the artists and the gallery people were really picky about the clothes people wear. It was kind of a reaction against fashion,” Le Courtois says.

People are still snobbish about shoes, and Le Courtois still makes her wearable art. Each pair takes five to six hours to weave and lasts roughly two weeks. She describes them as “really basic, minimal shoes” but they’re also mini sculptures, each with its own offbeat character.

Last summer, Le Courtois exhibited 102 pairs at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design (RMCAD). Eric Shumake, the former RMCAD gallery director, says he was delighted to give the work some exposure.

“It was a great blend of form and content,” he says. “What was interesting was the decision to make it more documentary style. There was sort of an anthropological feel to it.”

On display were the shoes she’d made out of string, rope, jute or whatever material she’d found over 16 years. Each pair exhibited was marked with a number, the date “born,” a list of every place Le Courtois had worn them — 30 countries in all — and the date each one had “died.”

But why would an artist trample her sculptures … even if they were shoes?

“It is a process of transformation and it’s made by movement just like any kind of sculpture,” she explains. “It’s a process that brings matter to a different stage. Most of my work and a lot of conceptual works are more about process, the action of making something.”

Shumake says Le Courtois is a rare artist who combines the elements of performance, sculpture and concept while equally balancing all three.

Le Courtois wears her funny little shoes, often over neon knee socks, as she treads mountains, deserts, cities and countrysides. Her current shoes traversed nine countries in just three weeks.

Back in Denver, she wears those shoes while she cooks up new show ideas. She says “pharmaceutical food” and the “digital media invasion” are the strongest contenders. Le Courtois spends about two years to build from concept to show, incorporating the exhibit space into the plans.

Look for Le Courtois’ work at the University of Denver school of art and art history’s juried alumni and student exhibition Jan. 10–Feb. 24 at the Victoria H. Myhren Gallery. Or visit http://homepage.mac.com/lecourtoisviviane .

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