Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain ::

Marc Audette

Marc Audette is interested in the forms taken by digital images and by their effects on the culture of the mind. Audette treats the image like language, and not as a neutral medium. This explains the constant crosspolination in Audette's artistic production between the digital and the analogue, the fixed and the moving image. Beyond topical aesthetic issues that crop up in his work, however, concerns of a more affective nature also surface. Through elaborate staging and interplay, the artist presents a body of work that is imbued with an imagination all his own, and a narrative line that weaves together motifs that allow spectators an intuitive and affective grasp of the work.

August 27 – October 15 2005
Intervalles: Marc Audette + Barbara Steinman

Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is proud to present two exhibitions of Marc Audette and Barbara Steinman. Marc Audette's Cran (2005) shows a double image, totally abstract, that can be read only if the spectator blocks one of the two images projected on the screen. "This action – the dependence of a fixed image on human intervention – may remind us of the daguerreotype which must be held in the hand and tipped back and forth for the image to manifest its brilliance." The title of the work recalls the gear mechanism of 35 mm cameras, where notches located between the gear wheels temporarily block their operation. In Cran, a screen is placed in the middle of a room between two video projectors, thus obstructing their light beams.

On entering the exhibition room, the visitor sees, on one side, a device that projects a positive image on the screen. On the other side of the room, a second device projects the negative of the same image on the same screen. The encounter of the two projections on the surface of the screen causes a disintegration of the image, leaving a whitish form. The image of the Medusa only appears when the viewer slips between projection and screen, producing a play of shadows.

The image was taken in Turkey or more precisely Istanbul, in an underground cistern I found in the Sultanahmet quarter, in the historical heart of the city. I have several reasons for choosing this particular site. The first, which is very personal, goes back to the beginning of my practice, when I was interested in Philippe Dubois and his thoughts about the photographic act. Dubois reflects, in particular, on the relationship that the viewer entertains with the work. Using the surface properties of water to reflect and project his thoughts, he speaks to us of photographic ideas through the myth of the Medusa. The cistern where water and Medusa came together in one place gave me the perfect opportunity to revisit photographic ideas that had inspired me in the early years, when I first stared thinking about my work.

So much for the relationship between the work and my own history, which is only one of my reasons for creating Cran. For me, the history of this giant stone head gives the work a special dimension. The Medusa, recycled as construction material, once graced the façade of a noble Turkish house. People believed at the time that the head would ward off misfortune, but somewhere between the 14th and 16th centuries, in the middle of religious wars between Christianity and Islam, one of the belligerents removed the sculpture from the front of the house and placed it in the cistern under the city, thus affirming their supremacy.

As I put this work in context, I am reminded of another reason for choosing this site to capture the images for Cran: Istanbul itself, a city divided between two continents, Europe and Asia, between two great cultures, West and East, between two great religious movements, Christianity and Islam. The Medusa of the cistern perfectly illustrates the outcome of this confrontation between two ways of “believing” the world. And although her displacement happened over 500 years ago, recent history clearly shows us that the forces that brought these two great cultures into conflict are more alive than ever. What remains to be seen is who and what in our culture will be swallowed up.

Marc Audette holds a Master's degree in visual arts from York University (Toronto) where he is also teaching. Since the mid-eighties, he has shown his work within different group and solo exhibitions, for instance, in France, Toronto, Montreal, Hull and Ottawa. His works are also part of collections such as Québec's National Museum of Fine Arts and the City of Ottawa. This fall, Marc Audette is going to publish Écran/Screen a catalogue regrouping the works presented in the exhibitions "Beau temps, mauvais temps/ Rain or Shine" and "Screen". More >>

January 15 - February 26, 2005
Marc Audette: Surfaces sensibles

Surfaces sensibles is a collection of three bodies of work, all based on the underlying theme of water. Even though the large-scaled coloured photographs in the first room of the gallery depict no actual representation of water – no lakes or rivers – the impression of water is created by the predominant presence of the colour blue. Video projectors flash a series of light images onto the photographs. The resulting reverberations produce constantly changing aqueous formations which lap against the walls of the gallery and in which we bathe our gaze. In the back room, a projector throws light onto a massive red photograph. As we move through this space, the reverberations on the opposite wall appear to transform into waves. The last room displays several smaller-format pieces that echo the major pieces in the first two rooms.

I've been interested in the creation of digital images since the mid-1980s. In this project, I'm generally reflecting on the apparent improvement that every new technological device or software release seems to offer us. In a world where technological innovation is synonymous with corporate investment, I pose the following question: what are the criteria for assessing this improvement.

Images, including digital images, are intimately connected to the main characteristics of human activity like religion, nationality, membership and art. However, language, like image, is not a neutral vehicle. Setting ideal standards for the digital image means setting the language to be used for defining concepts, ideas and realities. All of which can be presented on a monitor, print paper, and photographic paper or on canvas since the last support also can be printed. It is this fine but unequivocal relation between tools and (oeuvre) that animate this work.

Surfaces sensibles reflects in particular at the notion of idealize beauty of the digital images. In a world where big corporations like Microsoft, Adobes, and others, are the providers of software, this notion is not only measured in terms of precision and size "mega-pixel", but more interestingly by the multiplication of specials effects filters; real allegory of those news dogmas of the image. Among those filter there is one that is called "Gaussian Blur". It creates a blur of to the images to which it is apply. But before being a filter, Gaussian is a mathematical model that produces random number in Chaos theory. By means of a Gaussian filter, and with a hint of irony, Audette has created an allegory of is one which blurs those supposed improvements that come with new software upgrades. Keeping in mind here that this mathematical model of randomness was incorporated to software as an improvement of aesthetic values. These aesthetic values that seem to become more precise with each new arrival of software upgrades. We witness here, a precise blur. This work was previously seen at the MacLaren Art Centre from September 23 to October 29, 2004. Article: Colin Wingiton, ArtCity Magazine, "Marc Audette: l'eau/water", Aug/Sep/Oct/Nov 2004.

The gallery will also be participating in "The Montreal All-Nighter" featuring the exhibition by Marc Audette, and the musical stylings of dj Eloi Desjardins (10pm), in conjunction with the MONTREAL HIGH LIGHTS Festival, taking place over the night of Saturday, February 26 and Sunday, February 27. The event starts at 6pm Saturday 6pm, and ends Sunday at 6am.

January 12 - February 16, 2002
Marc Audette: Écran

In this exhibition, the artist explores the surfaces that mediate images. Écran presents large photographs that cover the walls of the gallery. Obvious traces of pixels on these photographs indicate that a digital video projector was used during their production in the dark room. In addition, some of the photographs are transformed into projection screens, a play on the way in which technology creates an effect of mise en abyme. Seen as a whole, the work suggests distinct constellations of figures and celestial phenomena. Marc Audette states :

"No photograph can assert to claim what Roland Barthe called la noèse because a photograph is no longer an infallible witness of what has taken place in front of the camera. Thanks to software that can break down an image into units called pixels, all manner of artifice, and all fantasies are possible. And with a modicum of techne, the end result can be remarkable. The ability to transform a photographic image and to hide these transformations in a seamless way creates doubt and confusion. Not only is the photograph changed, but all the imaginary rules for interpreting images are overthrown as well. I am interested in the impact of this technology, not only for the change that it creates on the image itself, but for the changes that it provokes in our imaginary universe, where memories, emotions and feeling lay."

Cibachromes of large format from the series L'intuition d'Ovide (1994-95) are on view in the second room of the gallery. Marc Audette obtained a Master of Fine Arts from York University, Toronto, where he currently teaches. Since 1986, his works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions, notably in Toronto, Montréal, Hull, Banff as well as in France.

1. Marc Audette, Écran, 2001, Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain