PASCAL GRANDMAISON

2016

Oct 26

KAMLOOPS ART GALLERY EXTERIOR WINDOWS

Through photography and video installation, Montreal-based artist Pascal Grandmaison explores techniques for capturing the image and scrutinizes the conditions under which it is produced. His practice re-imagines the photographic medium and its historical precedents to produce images anew. Grandmaison states that, for him, “the camera is just a tool through which the light passes.” Light and the process of capturing the image are intrinsically connected to time, a central focus in Grandmaison’s work.

Grandmaison foregrounds time through the absence of narration and the technique of slowing down and reversing the subject. His videos propose a reversed reality that rolls time backward and looks at the world in the negative, generating uncanny views that seem to belong neither to the real world, nor to real time. The camera’s point of view, standing in for our gaze, offers an altered view of nature and the body through this transposed temporality.

Often based in the portrait genre, Grandmaison’s work uses formal strategies such as the close-up, white background, and a play of fragments and details to deal with subjects of everyday life. Through poetic studies of the relationship between human beings and the world, his work confronts the human desire for superiority of reason over nature.

DISSOLUTION I and NOSTALGIE 2 are part of the Kamloops Art Gallery’s onsite exhibition All membranes are porous on view until December 31. Grandmaison’s dual projection DISSOLUTION I suggests a fluid and abstract reference to the body by way of a manufactured means of child’s play (the soap bubble). NOSTALGIE 2 situates the human hand directly into a rich, fertile natural landscape. Both works are contemplative studies that oscillate between abstraction and figuration, referring to the complex relationship between our bodies and the world around us.

http://www.pascalgrandmaison.com/