Les voix
(A Practical Study of Anthropomorphism)
2023, Place Ville Marie.
Multimedia installation with large language model, performance, interactions with the public.
Interpreters: Melania
Maria Balmaceda Venegas, Xavier Goulet, Léa-Kenza Laurent, Julie Le Tallec,
Luca Max, Mikaël Morin, Fa Pedneault, Justine Prévost, Alexis Tisseur.
Photos by Mike Patten / Avery Suzuki / Mike Grenier
[Project website]
[Book]
Esquisses d’un inventaire
2023, Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran.
Installation, drawings, paintings, scultpures.
[View press release]
Pluralism.xyz
2019-2022.
Series of surveys. Paper and web questionnaires, website.
[View project website]
Between 2019 and 2022, I designed surveys that I presented as part of several exhibitions. The surveys invited visitors to directly express their views on existential issues that were addressed, though less explicitly, by the works.
My objectives were to question the methods associated with data collection and interpretation, and to make visible the ambiguous relationship between quantitative and qualitative paradigms. The world is increasingly measured, represented, and governed by numbers derived from data collection. However, in many cases, the most important issues — the environment, the future of humanity, the meaning of life, etc. — are fundamentally qualitative in nature, whose real meaning, always contextual, multidimensional, and subjective, cannot be transposed into numbers.
I therefore wanted to explore and visualize the gap between what we try to measure and what it is possible to express through data. The surveys were a way to experiment with formal structures to address difficult questions, and to blur the line between the quantitative and the qualitative.
Eyes Adjusting Slowly
2021,
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
Architectural installation, paintings, survey.
[View press release]
[See survey results]
Positions
2020,
Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran.
Architectural installation, paintings, questionnaire, audio loop, rock.
[Listen to audio work]
[View press release]
281 visitors answered the existential questionnaire.
[View results here]
Sobey Art Award Exhibition
2019-2020, Art Gallery of Alberta
Architectural installation, paintings, questionnaire, audio loop.
[More information here]
941 visitors answered the existential questionnaire.
[View results here]
Built-In
2018-2019, NAVEL
Modular space dividers, ongoing series of events.
[More information here]
Built-In was a series of collaborative events as well as a modular structure that was designed and built to become part of NAVEL and its program of presentations, screenings, lectures, performances and other forms of public engagement. The project is, in essence, relational. It is a site-specific design proposition: an ensemble of space dividers that bring attention to the relations between individual elements and collectivity, virtual and physical space, minds and bodies. The objective was to establish an ongoing collaboration between artists, academics and others who are interested in using the structure as a platform to discuss the organization of living beings in physical space — past, present, and possible futures. For more information about the individual events, please consult NAVEL’s archives [here].
Vertically Integrated Socialism (Lecture-Performance)
2017, Centre Clark
Architectural installation / Series of 20 lecture-performances.
Vertically
Integrated Socialism is a work of anticipation that questions how radical inclusion can take shape in a free-market economy. This installation was created to accompany a series of lecture-performances.
Vertically Integrated Socialism took different forms over the years. It was originally presented at the Bruges Triennale of Art and Architecture in 2015. (See longer description further down.)
Le temps de l’œuvre, le temps du travail / The Time of the Work
2016, SIGHTINGS, Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery
Collaborative project / Installation, artworks, participants, time, transactions.
[More information here]
[PDF catalogue]
The project proposed, for the duration of an exhibition, an economic system that allowed the acquisition of artworks without money. Sixteen artworks by Canadian artists were acquired during the exhibition.
Vertically Integrated Socialism
2015, Bruges Triennial of Art and Architecture
Architectural installation, models, video.
[Watch video trailer]
Taking the disparity of Los Angeles as a point of departure, Vertically Integrated Socialism imagines a housing concept in which the entire social pyramid coexists in a single building — a closed architectural, economic and social environment. A video accompanying the installation explains how the system incorporates inclusive socialist policies in a ruthless free-market framework, creating a dynamic of contradictory value systems.
The project was commissioned by the Bruges Triennial of Art and Architecture, and built inside the church of the Grootseminarie in the city of Bruges. The exhibition comprised a micro-apartment, a model of the housing concept and a 43 minutes video.
Promised Land Template
2014, Commonwealth & Council
2014, Biennale de Montréal, MAC
Architectural installation, paintings, light, cactus.
[More information here]
Assorted Templates
2014 Galerie Art Mûr
[Read press release]
2014 Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
[Read press release]
Watchtower Template
(Brutalist Tree House)
2013. Concord, Los Angeles
Modular architectural installation.
Watchtower Template (Brutalist Tree House) is a site-specific installation designed for Concord, an experimental art space and artist residency in Los Angeles (now closed). The tower is both an intrusion in the privacy of the residents and an intimate space where one can be away from the communal areas. The two modular L-shaped walls have handles that allow a constant reconfiguration or division of the living and working spaces of Concord, each time modifying the power relation between the watchtower and its surroundings.
Things Are Gonna Change I Can Feel It
2013. Torrance Art Museum
The Future is Deep
2011, The Collective Show Los Angeles
Architectural model, videos, text.
The Future is Deep was made for The Collective Show Los Angeles. The work was a collaborative project by L.A. Pedestrians, a loose collective through which we organized exhibitions in different countries. This model spatialized the current and future activities of the group as of 2011. Three spaces containing projects related to the group are here represented at 1:36 scale. These include Art Mur in Montreal, Canada; Espace Curtat-tunnel in Lausanne, Switzerland; and a rooftop in Los Angeles, USA. In addition, the model included a connective space with mirrored floor standing in for the physical space of the exhibition, as well as a bottomless room or pit of possibility containing the future of L.A. Pedestrians.
Financially Sustainable,
Self-Sufficient Artist Studio
2010, Artist book. Collaboration with Melodie Mousset, layout design by Ania Diakoff.
[View / read the book]
On The Top / Bottom
2010. AT1, Los Angeles. Collaboration with Melodie Mousset.
Series of performances, architectural installation.
On The Top/Bottom was conceived as a dynamic, non-neutral space to host a series of performances. The architecture was both a container and a mechanism to experiment with relations of power between the performer and the audience. Our project was part of a larger curated group show (Volume, at AT1 Projects, Los Angeles), and beside our own program of performances we used the structure as a Trojan Horse to host a series of additional performances by guest artists.
