Saturday, November 2, 2013
12:30-1:30- French Talk/ 2:00- 3:00 English Talk
Bilingual Artist Talk by Amélie Brisson-Darveau
Artist Talks:
Saturday, November 2nd, 12:30 - 1:30 PM- French Artist Talk
Saturday, November 2nd, 2 - 3 PM- English Artist Talk
About the Exhibition:
Amélie Brisson-Darveau’s explores the interrelation between the body and its movement and the nature of the image produced (that small shadow that follows it) – an animation in situ (with a potential for immediate narrative) showing the relation between the choreography of these movements and their relation to fictional structures, like fabric, architecture or narrative.
The artist traces her friends’ shadows to collect the patterns for clothing that she then tailors. The shadows we create are moving images. From these fluid, abstract shapes the artist creates phantasmagoric, improbable, unusable clothes. Their rich materiality merges into the real while their usability has to remain on an imaginary scheme. By installing them directly on the floor, aligned as if on a carousel, the artist creates a playful ground on which the spectators are invited not only to observe from a distance the objects of the installation, but to try out the size of the clothes installed on the floor as shadows in a recurrent fashion. To wear one’s own shadow is the metaphorical proposal realized by the artist by pointing and manipulating the light of projectors mounted on tripods, in the ephemeral overlapping of the projected shadow of the spectator with the clothes installed on the floor. The overlapping of the fleeting shadow with the clothes is a procedural operation extending not only metaphorically, but giving material strength to the movement itself. Through the play of the spectators the surface of the textile is activated, materializing the immateriality of the shadows as the clothes-shadows become “alive” and transform into living pictures. The poses and design of the clothes-shadows refer to and are inspired by four different stories in which the main protagonist has lost their shadow, due to a contract, rejection, love, travel and such. These are Peter Schlemihl by Adalbert von Chamisso, The Shadow by Hans Christian Andersen, The Story of the Lost Reflection by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, and The Woman without a Shadow by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
A sound installation complements that of the shadow clothing, covering the space acoustically and merging with the clothes-shadows installed on the floor, absorbing from their textile surface. The artist is here inspired by the ways in which the narratives of the four stories overlap, cross, and mirror each other, scan each other in order to reflect on folklore and old legends bundling our fears and exploring how a mental space is constructed in their projections.
Artist's Website: http://www.ameliebd.com/
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