FUNDRAISING EXHIBITION
INHABITING THE UNCERTAINTY OF A SHOWCASE
• 14 artists and duets • 14 works •
• Limited edition of 10 numbered prints •
On the occasion of the launch of a digital book featuring the first two seasons of its Vitrine, TOPO is pleased to invite you to a fundraising exhibition with the artists that showcased their work during this period (2015-2017). The works will be available for sale online throughout 2018, the anniversary year of the center’s foundation.
In 2018, TOPO will highlight its 25th year of existence and 20th year of presence on the Web. A series of activities will be announced in the coming year to celebrate the artists, creators and partners who participated in the creative ecosystem of the organization. To launch this series of anniversary events, TOPO will unveil on December 6th, 2017 the production of a digital book, freely available, presenting the 13 exhibitions of the first two seasons of the Vitrine (2015-2017). In order to enrich the book experience and support the activities of the center, the launch will be accompanied by an exhibition presenting the works of the artists of the 2015-2017 programming. Printed works (average size 16×20 in. / 40×50 cm) are available for sale at a cost of $150 each. Part of the profits will be given to the artists. TOPO would like to thank them warmly for their contribution.
HUGO NADEAU • AUDREY-MAUDE MCDUFF • PAT BADANI • STEVE HEIMBECKER • OLI SORENSON • JOSEPH LEFÈVRE • SANTIAGO TAVERA • MAXIME BOISVERT • JULIEN-ROBERT • ÉLÈNE TREMBLAY • JEAN-RENÉ LEBLANC / CARL SPENCER • SARAH CHOUINARD-POIRIER • SIMON DUMAS / MICKAËL LAFONTAINE • ISABELLE GAGNÉ •
// THE WORKS
01. Hugo Nadeau
commun, commune, communauté, communautaire, communion, communication, communisme
150$
[wpecpp name=”nousauronsmontreal” price=”150″]
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Artist in the fields of visual and media arts, performance and poetry. He has presented his projects across Canada, the United States, Brazil, Poland, England, Germany and China. He is the recipient of several local, provincial and national grants and awards. His multifaceted background and conceptual vision of art led him to found a series of open-ended projects such as: Conspiration H1N1, Projet Citoyen Modèle, Édifice H. Nadeau pour la poésie, LHN (Ligue Hugo Nadeau) and C.A.C.H.E. (Centre d’Art Caché d’Hugo pour l’Éternité) in order to pursue a certain artistic autonomy. He is originally from Saint-Zacharie in Chaudière-Appalaches and currently lives in Montreal. |
Digital print composed from the video game Nous Aurons, presenting the cooperative Archipel (Laurentia) on the territory of the former island of Montreal, unceded Mohawk territory. The “graffiti” visible on the building comes from the exhibition “The idea of the common” of the artist Anne-Marie Ouellet. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 16×20 po. / 40×50 cm. Not framed. • Flat rate of 150 $ CAN. Available at TOPO’s office without any other fee. If shipped, shipping and packaging costs will apply. |
02. Audrey-Maude McDuff
Carnets de captures
150$
[wpecpp name=”carnetsdecapture” price=”150″]
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| Audrey-Maude McDuff received a master’s degree in Visual Arts from Concordia University in 2014. She creates installations combining drawing and video that reflect on time, the appearance and disappearance of the image and the deployment of thought. Her work has been presented in several individual and collective exhibitions, including Agence Topo, Art Mûr Gallery, the Société des arts technologiques (SAT), and several editions of Montreal’s Nuit Blanche. She has also exhibited in the United States, Italy and Belgium. She lives and works in Montreal. |
Carnets de capture is a video installation in which the notebook, the workshop and the deployment of thought are at the heart of the concerns. Between drawing, video and performative gestures, this work questions the close link between a thought and its support. The work reflects on the conditions of emergence of an image or an idea. It presents an attempt to “capture” a fleeting thought. This desire to want to “seize” is definitely a failure. To follow the multitude of ideas that pass through our heads, images are formed, transformed, but do not remain. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 16×20 po. / 40×50 cm. Not framed. |
03. Pat Badani
make-A-move
150$
[wpecpp name=”makeamove” price=”150″]
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| Originally from Argentina and based in Chicago, Pat Badani is an international artist with a master’s degree in Visual arts from the Art Institute of Chicago. As a practitioner, researcher, professor, editor and curator, she is interested in the relationship between new media and the social sphere. Her conceptual and contextual practice is articulated through artistic creation, research and writing on subjects such as housing, transculturality, the migration movements of the population and a development-oriented way of life sustainable.
Her work has been presented in North and South America, Europe and Asia. She has participated in many international symposia and her writings have been published internationally, and she has received numerous awards and honors. Badani is currently a professor of integrated media at the Illinois State University School of Art; Acting Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program in Media Arts at Columbia College, Chicago; editor-in-chief of Media-N Journal, the New Media Caucus; and guest editor of “Artelogie”, EHESS (France). Since January 2017, she sits on the Board of Directors of ISEA International. |
With this work, Badani emphasizes his apprehension about privacy and personal space in a surveillance context. Paule Marcus wrote about the work: “With make-A-move, it is the creative and playful potential of surveillance that is staged. The possibility of subjectivity within this process is revived by close-up portraits and the intimate distance they impose. Through this work, Pat Badani invites us to think of surveillance as something that can be re-appropriated to shape a public space to the benefit of its many singularities. “ The work was designed and produced by Pat Badani during a residency at TOPO, in co-production with Art Souterrain, Montreal, whose 2015 edition was about safety, and with the support of Patrice Coulombe (technical advisor) and Paul Gascou-Vaillancourt (production assistant). • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 16×20 po. / 40×50 cm. Not framed. • Flat rate of 150 $ CAN. Available at TOPO’s office without any other fee. If shipped, shipping and packaging costs will apply. |
04. Steve Heimbecker
Taberneige
150$
[wpecpp name=”metafive” price=”150″]
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| Steve Heimbecker. Artist, composer and creator of multi-channel sound systems. Conceptually his work is based upon his fascination with the architecture of space and the measurement of time within space including his natural inclination toward cross-modal representation. His installations, compositions and performances have been presented across Canada, Europe, New York City, and Peru, and are included in such public collections as the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Alberta Art Foundation, and the Foothills Hospital Foundation. He lives and works in the Eastern Townships of Québec. |
The work is one of the many neologisms created by the artist for his series of multi-screen installations and performance poetry Ripaliper, METAFIVE and Notes realized between 2012 and 2016. Taberneige was written by the artist on March 16, 2014 and was then scanned and scanned for use in its digital productions and prints. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 13×20 po. / 33×50 cm. Not framed. |
05. Oli Sorenson
Video Pistoletto 6280
150$
[wpecpp name=”videopistoleto” price=”150″]
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Born in Los Angeles, Oli Sorenson has lived and worked in London (UK) between 1999 and 2010, to combine his artistic activities with curatorial work (including several events at Tate Britain, the Institute of Contemporary Art and the British Film Institute). Sorenson has often exhibited internationally, including at the Millennium Museum (Beijing), the Media Art Institute (Amsterdam), ZKM (Karlsruhe) and DokFest (Kassel). He performs regularly in media festivals such as ISEA (Helsinki and Nagoya), Mapping Festival (Geneva) and MAF (Bangkok). He is now based in Montreal, Canada since 2010. As a remix artist, Sorenson defines his practice by subverting preconceptions of originality and singular authorship, an approach that is often delivered via media performance projects in festive and collaborative contexts. His explorations are fed particularly by a fascination for the overabundance of content and information available online, as much as a critique of the strict copyright rules imposed on mechanically and digitally reproducible media. |
The Pistoletto Video project is a continuation of my recent remix work, which involves borrowing the creative gesture of other artists to direct them towards materials and issues that have not yet been explored by these authors. Here I destroy LCD screens in the same way that Michelangelo Pistoletto breaks his big mirrors. I’m tackling technological materials to produce a multitude of performance artifacts, such as those broken LCD screen photos. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 20×16 po. / 50×40 cm. Not framed. |
06. Joseph Lefèvre
Une curieuse vitrine
150$
[wpecpp name=”Curieuse vitrine” price=”150″]
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As a new media artist Joseph Lefebvre creates interactive installations, web art projects and live visual performances. His digital and interactive works have been presented at various international events and festivals such as Siggraph, ISEA Montreal, Cyberart Bilbao and Netart Sao Paulo. He holds two master’s degrees in Visual arts and Communications from the Université du Québec à Montréal. He works at the Société des arts technologiques (SAT) since its founding in 1995 where he is currently the director of the residency program and the coordinator of the SAT[MixSessions] and Digital Factory activities. He lives and works in Montreal. |
The exhibition “Une curieuse vitrine” was composed of a multitude of intriguing and heterogeneous objects as well as colorful projections that animated geometric volumes. At the heart of this festive atmosphere, we discover a complex world where horror strangely rubs shoulders with frivolity: photos of Senegalese and Moroccan riflemen dead for a nation that is not theirs, piled human skulls in salt dough that refer to the genocide operated by the Khmer Rouge. In this work, the artist remixes, often in a traditional way, various objects, memories and elements of culture that are dear to him and transmits facts to us in a committed, sensitive and clairvoyant way. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 20×16 po. / 50×40 cm. Not framed. |
07. Santiago Tavera
Translational Spaces
150$
[wpecpp name=”translationalspacesjaune” price=”150″]
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Santiago Tavera is an interdisciplinary digital artist born in Colombia. He migrated to Canada at a young age where he began his exploration of digital culture in relation to the experience of a transcultural body. Santiago uses digital media as a tool for experimentation that can simulate a state of disembodiment. His creative-research explores digital media and its capacity to alter visual and spatial perception. His work examines viewers’ sensory stimulation within the digital realm and the physical one, exploring the effects digital media has on social interactions, communicational skills, inhabitation of spaces and notions of time. Santiago’s digital drawings and designs work as blueprints for potential immersive installations and interactive projects. He constructs digital architectural environments, where there is a constant translation between digital and physical lines, lights and colours. Santiago holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) with a Specialization in Visual Arts and a Major in Psychology from the University of Western Ontario. He is currently completing his Masters in Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, where he currently resides. |
Models of Spatial Fictions is a series of digital animations from the Translational Spaces project. These graphic animations are designated by the artist as digital architectural environments within virtual landscapes. The visual plot is based on diagrams, cartoons, models of virtual architectures and drawings of structures in transition that explore the temporal and spatial movement of shadows and lights. It is a set of tables and dynamic spaces mainly composed of graphic and three-dimensional forms evoking places of memory, imagination, desire and dream, real or invented spaces. These animations are reflected in the website www.dssots.com, where the artist associates short fictional texts around the translation * of forms and identities in real and virtual spaces. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 16×20 po. / 40×50 cm. Not framed. |
08. Maxime Boisvert
Regards et jeux dans les îles de la nuit
150$
[wpecpp name=”Bloc erratique” price=”150″]
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Maxime Boisvert has a background in both visual arts and photography. He is currently applying for a Master’s degree in Visual and Media Arts at UQAM. His work has been presented at the Parameter (2015/2016) and Short Exposure exhibitions, among others. Boisvert is the recipient of many awards and scholarships, including those of excellence Mc Abbie, Omer DeSerres, Thomas Corriveau and Mario Côté. Its production is supported by the UQAM FARE recruitment excellence scholarship. In his practice, Boisvert amalgamates Quebec history, culture and literature. Her approach is driven by a desire to discover and question her heritage in order to register and continue by participating. Photography and text are the main tools of his research. However, he tries to vary the approaches in which they are used and thus to exploit in a different way their power of evocation. His projects are related elements, whose purpose is to put them in dialogue and see what emerges from it. In his practice, he uses as raw material the existing elements of Quebec culture, on the one hand as a source of inspiration and on the other hand to pay tribute to them, question them and update them. |
A typist, connected to a computer, autonomously and continuously taps poetry generated live by an algorithm inspired by Markov chains. The source text, used by the JavaScript code to create poetry, is composed of the works of two French-Canadian poets, Saint-Denys Garneau and Alain Grandbois. Although they are poles apart from each other on many levels, they have both been of paramount importance in the genesis of Quebec literature. The poetry generated from Regards et jeux dans l’espace of Saint-Denys Garneau on the one hand and collections The islands of the Night and Shores of the man of Alain Grandbois is typed in the “infinite” by the typist on a sheet of continuous paper. Reconciling them through this project is a way of questioning their heritage, their impact on our culture and what they say about it, and therefore, what they say about us. As Pierre Nepveu says in his book on the genesis of Quebec literature, Garneau and Grandbois are among those poets who are “now perceived as both symptoms and lighthouses, used to trace or develop the history of Quebec. as myth and destiny, as a psychic adventure or as an existential project (an unfortunate project, aborted, to be rephrased, and to be totally taken up again). “This project has thus become a pretext for a re-reading of these poets, perhaps to their actualization and their reappropriation.
• Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 20×16 po. / 50×40 cm. Not framed. |
09. Julien-Robert
Fit in the Crowd
150$
[wpecpp name=”Fit in the crowd” price=”150″]
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Julien-Robert is a multi-disciplinary artist who explores the relationships between sound and image. He creates audio-visual performances and installations enriched by his experiences throughout his musical journey. He began his studies in instrumental and electroacoustic composition before expanding his artistic expertise to include video creation and interactive devices. During the creation process, he pays particular attention to the staging of his works in order to devise the most complete and authentic experiences possible for the audience. He has composed the music for several dance, short film, and theatre performances presented in various festivals around the world. Currently, he is working in collaboration with Julien Compagne to combine music, video and technology, transforming the three elements into a new artistic form that is the foundation of their group Video Phase. |
Fit in the Crowd is an interactive triptych video installation illustrating some aspects of urban life. With images projected in the manner of a blinding strobe, the work evokes the oversaturation of messages to which we are exposed every day and suggests moments of comfort, of refuge, where life stops for a moment. It thus questions the space we inhabit, in an urban environment, in relation to the comfort it gives us by its anonymity. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 16×20 po. / 40×50 cm. Not framed. |
10. Élène Tremblay
Effets du vent sur un petit arbre décoratif
150$
[wpecpp name=”Effets du vent sur un petit arbre décoratif” price=”150″]
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Élène Tremblay (1962-2016). Through photography, video and mechanized installation, her work explored the recurring questions of the failure of contact in the simulacrum, the vulnerable and pathetic body in its posture, the call to the spectator’s empathy, the false address and the dramatization of the gaze of spectator. Holder of a doctorate in Arts Studies and Practices from the Université du Québec à Montréal, she has published in 2013 L’insistance du regard sur le corps éprouvé, pathos et contre-pathos (éditions FORUM Ed., collection Cinethesis, Udine, Italy). Professor in the Department of Art History and Film Studies at the Université de Montréal, she has been previously director of programming at Espace Vox in Montreal and curator of several exhibitions. |
The image comes from the video work Effets du vent sur un petit arbre décoratif. A small tree is subjected to the increasingly powerful wind of a wind tunnel. The tree remains rooted even though its branches tilt almost horizontally. The sarcastic and reflective approach of the video illustrates the quite natural disturbance of the wind but through an artificial intervention. This video was produced in a scientific engineering laboratory that is usually used to measure the impact of wind on buildings (Wind Tunnel Lab, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University). • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 12×20 po. / 30,5×50 cm. Not framed. |
11. Jean-René Leblanc and Carl Spencer
Black beauty
150$
[wpecpp name=”Black beauty” price=”150″]
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Jean-René Leblanc and Carl Spencer. Calgary-based artists, their collaboration on the artwork Toro Embistiendo was commissioned by the French CBC to be presented as a documentary as part of the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede. It was also featured in the web documentary series Cowboy: a Canadian Dream in 2013. They are both actively involved in the arts community as Board Directors at Emmedia Gallery and Production Society and co-founders of the Sensorium Lab, a cross-disciplinary research group focusing on artistic research that develops systems of interaction that encourage kinesthetic perception and interpretation. Their practice explores the relationship between technology and culture through issues related to interactivity. Their artworks individually have been presented in Canada, the USA, Europe, Asia and Australia. |
This image was taken from one of the bulls who participated in the realization of the work Toro embistiendo, presented in the Vitrine of TOPO. Toro embistiendo explores the image of the bull as emblematic figure of the culture of the rodeo and the cowboys in Canada. The title uses the Spanish language to refer to the bull that charges, an explicit reference to bullfighting so present in the Hispanic culture. This installation explores the game of the confrontation between the spectator and the video of a bull in his enclosure which begins to load when it is excited by passing in front of the showcase where the work is presented. Leblanc and Spencer propose a playful and metaphorical installation using interactivity to create a bridge between the real and the virtual. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 9,5×20 po. / 24×50 cm. Not framed. |
12. Sarah Chouinard-Poirier
indexE
150$
[wpecpp name=”indexe” price=”150″]
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Sarah Chouinard-Poirier. In her works, the multidisciplinary artist physically puts herself into play and develops performances in which presence, gesture, speech and object combine to create a radical experience and a feminist and resistant mythology. Acting between theater and action art, she is also involved in collective projects where she participates in the creation of interdisciplinary theatrical forms anchored in bodywork and performativity, based on contemporary writings or texts from directory. Since 2012, she coordinates the activities of Volte 21, a multidisciplinary art organization of which she is co-founder. She lives and works in Montreal. |
In February 2017, Sarah Chouinard-Poirier presented the indexE project in the TOPO showcase. indexE raises the question of the place of women in literature, using orality as a mean of sharing and transmission. The artist brought together an ad hoc community of 100 people identifying themselves as women, trans or queer person, by asking them to propose a book of particular importance in their life. This indexE of these 100 works to be kept unforgotten will be exhibited in the window display throughout the duration of the exhibition. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 15×20 po. / 38×50 cm. Not framed. |
13. Simon Dumas in collaboration with Mickaël Lafontaine
Choeur(s) pour castelet
150$
[wpecpp name=”nousauronsmontreal” price=”150″]
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| Simon Dumas. At the same time poet and artist, he has published five titles of poetry: Pastels fauves (Loup de gouttière Ed.2001), Petites îles de soif (Écrits des forges, 2003), La chute fut lente, interminable puis terminée (La Peuplade Ed., 2008) – finalist for the Alain-Grandbois prize – as well as Mélanie (2013) and Révélations (2016) at the Éditions de l’Hexagone. He has accomplished a writing residency in Mexico City in 2010 and another in Paris in the fall of 2014. He is co-founder and artistic director of Productions Rhizome whose mandate is to produce literary shows. He lives and works in Quebec City.
Mickaël Lafontaine. Multidisciplinary artist, his creative universe is at the crossroads of the real and the digital, of art and social. His artistic practice is based on video art, video-mapping, dance, poetry and philosophy. He uses video projection and interactivity to embody digital in the real world and make it live in the hands of the viewer. In parallel, he develops co-creation projects in educational and associative environments where art and new technologies become factors of social change. He lives and works between the cities of Nantes and Montreal. |
The work is taken from installation Choeur(s) pour castelet. The project is basically born of an installation whose heart is made of poetry. In the window, in the center of a small black tray, stands a number of characters. It is the inhabitants of a particular castle, men and women, who challenge the visitor. They are poets from Quebec and Belgium. Delayed poetic presences and reduced to the proportions of the castelet, which presents original texts and their authors, each associated with an audio artist. A video creation designed specifically for the device is added to each duo, as well as a dynamic typographic animation created by the artist Mickaël Lafontaine, who uses a tool-work he has developed: the Audiographe. The poet’s voice modulates the typographic animations created. Choeurs (s) is an installation of variable configuration and a tablet application developed with the collaboration of the artist and developer Louis-Robert Bouchard. A Rhizome production presented by TOPO with the support of the NT2 Laboratory and the Mobile Literature Research Group. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 16×20 po. / 40×50 cm. Not framed. |
14. Isabelle Gagné
Stratotype digital-ien
150$
[wpecpp name=”mer” price=”150″]
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Born in Boisbriand, Isabelle Gagné is a pioneer of mobile art in Canada. It was in 2009 that she naturally turned to mobile devices as a medium of artistic expression. Strongly fueled by its digital environment, she is particularly interested in Quebec’s contemporary natural landscape, an enunciative marker of heritage. Her research is multiplatform, drawing its raw material in photos, screenshots, and even accidents (graphics) found on the Internet. |
Stratotype digital-ien is an autonomous computer robot (a bot) that randomly recomposes images of the Quebec landscape. He transforms the photos taken by the artist Isabelle Gagné and those collected from citizens. In original photographs, the bot adds extracts of images of similar geomorphological nature found on Google Image, creating a new generation of images. The modified images create unusual visual occurrences of Québec territory on the web and search engines. • Inkjet print. Archive quality paper acid free – Fuji Premium Matte 230g. Format: 20x15 po. / 50×38 cm. Not framed. |