some newer work

Okay, so it's been a while since I've updated this thing, so here we go. Here are some images of newer work (well, from the last two years...) that are now photo-worthy for posting. I did all the shooting at the studio for my Master's application for both UQAM and Concordia. Still waiting for a response from either of them...

The Lives and Deaths of the Boxes

A lot of these boxes deal with death (and, by proxy, life).
Death and life in all shapes and forms: the physical death of a person (an hommage to them) to their death from your life (the ceremony of letting go of them, but if I am putting them away in boxes, am I really letting go of them? I am recontextualizing their death as a part of a scenario that I am creating); the decay of life and nature's ability to transform what is dead into something that is useful, rendering it alive in some way, keeping the chain going, everything can be used - nothing is gained, nothing is lost, everything is transformed (Lavoisier's Law of Energy). This is why I recycle, I perpetuate the act of transformation, so that nature doesn't have to do all the work, over thousands of years. If you can give a new purpose to something, an object, a feeling, anything, that has been discarded, then you can allow it to become more important, you can allow it to live again in another lifetime of use. The thing which you have saved becomes charged with a new type of energy, and everytime that you use it, it gains more energy. It gains life. These things bring us closer to discover ourselves because they show us parts of ourselves which we don't normally have access to (opening doors...). At this point in time, I could start writing an essay about how things (for lack of a better word at this point in time) in the world relate to each other, but I got to hit up some galleries today, to promote the show we (my studiomates and I) will be having next friday.

William Street Collective Open House

William Street Collective Open House

The William Street artist's studios will be opening their doors to everyone: gallery directors, art buyers and collectors, colleagues, friends and family on Friday, June 27th from 5-9pm. The studio will also be open on Saturday and Sunday (the 28th and 29th) from 12-5pm.

New work

So, I have been at work, doing lots of different things, i.e. organizing shows, cleaning my studio, checking out lots of vernissages... Looking for art-related jobs, seems a bit more promising than before... Here is a new piece:

1-Found-ation

Mixed media assemblage

2008

This piece was finished on the rush to get in a show (MasterPeace, at the MFA gallery, Concordia University) and I am quite happy with it. It sums up a lot of my personal philosophies. That is why it is called Found-ation. Discussions with my friend and colleague Patrick Bureau have led me to undergo further exploration into the idea that the shapes of the boxes that I have been producing over the years reference different types of technology.

Found-ation is like a laptop, with the upper part being the screen and the lower part being the inside of the computer, in many regards. In reference to technology, it becomes a train of thought, where what is inside is the information and hardware which allows the screen to display a representation of what is inside the computer, by means of having read all the information and produced a two-dimensional reading based on the three-dimensional information trapped inside the box. Through a metaphorical perspective (one which stretches out to become a telos of sorts), we have a foundation which hides underneath it the tools to build what emerges out of it. A scary-looking little man, a key on a key-chain wrapped in an old bra-strap, little pieces of garbage and wood, all contained as the entities which brought about the building of a foundation that never was continued but echoes the ghosts of the decisions (the doors) that were made to get to where it managed to get. It is a layering of visual puns to create a philosophy. 

Artist's Statement

The act of losing myself in the urban decay is essential to my artistic process: I roam, as a truant would, between the worn-down walls of the unkempt underworld of the city. I search dark corners of back alleys for the echoes of natural processes that relate to human experience. The visual encounter triggers a sense of place vis-à-vis philosophical inquiries; it charges me with a creative momentum that is filtered and distilled once in my studio. Wherever I roam, I pick up objects that catch my eye or please my aesthetic sensibilities, as artifacts of my journeys -pieces of wood from abandoned furniture, pieces of metal from mechanisms or tools and fragments of paper with markings of these forgotten locations, as well as photographic documentation for further visualization.

My recent work is a culmination of experiments about relationships between constructed boxes, using transformed found materials, and prints depicting images of architectural elements, i.e. doors and windows from the cityscape. This juxtaposition relies on a dichotomy between real three-dimensional spaces and projected two-dimensional ones, blurring the delineation between inside and outside and infusing a sense of location and memory into the pieces. Built as quasi-miniatures, the viewer needs to closely peer inside the boxes to visually interact with their scale and the objects contained within them. This causes a shift in one’s own relationship to space and pulls the viewer as a participant in a new, more psychologically loaded one, where the subconscious roams in an expansive, multi-leveled world.

Most recently, I have become involved in the production of miniaturized objects from everyday life in the city, like garbage bags, park benches and scaled-down buildings constructed from their actual materials. From the standpoint of a recycler, I grab what is defunct or basically, dead by proxy of being abandoned, and, through natural processes I re-animate it, giving it a role as part of something real. From the standpoint of an image-maker, I desire to realistically re-create and re-mind the viewer, through an adapted form of painting, about how nature and time affect the city around us and, by proxy, the people who inhabit it. As Lewis Mumford explains in The City in History, the city is “a product of earth … a fact of nature … man's method of expression.” The city reflects our activities and our energies; it acts like a temple in constant flux. Using this energy towards a transformative end allows me to fuse my artistic objectives with my personal sense of responsibility as a citizen, not only of Montreal, but of a planet which needs to re-construct its values and sense of place in the 21st century.

The studio

Here is where I work. It is a complete mess right now, but I know where everthing is, at least. I like the fact that I am surrounded, to the point of being immersed, in my materials and mediums. It makes me feel as though I am a maestro, or even better, a traffic cop, controlling the coming and going of the cars at a very busy intersection. It's kind of risky, but not in a conventional way; it's allowing myself to be surprised, even if I know exactly where I am.

The purpose of the miniatures

The miniatures are three-dimensional elements which act as props inside of small environments which, for the most part have an image at the back (in my previous work, it has been doors, but I have started boxes with gates, staircases, alleyways, and other spaces which can be found in the urban landscape). The minatures allow me to enhance the sense of physical space inside of the environments, through a juxtaposition between 2D and 3D elements. The 2D images take on the illusion of projected spaces while the 3D miniature sculptures gain a sense of reality in front of them. Here are a few examples of previous boxes, and you can see through the progression how I went from trying to make images to how I am now trying to create environments. In order of sequence:

1- The Peacock (Don't Ever Show That to Me Again), 2005
2- Kitschen (Alex in Wonderland), 2006
3- The Cameleon, 2007
4- Untitled, 2007