“One Eye Open” (2011) three-channel video HD projection. Installation view at Galerie René Blouin. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie René Blouin.
Pascal Grandmaison’s latest exhibition “Projections†is currently on view at Galerie Réne Blouin, for the inauguration of his new space on 2020 William Street, Montréal with two recent video works. A soundless three-channel HD video projection, “One Eye Open†(2011) meticulously depicts a bouquet of plastic flowers illuminated in pseudo-natural beauty, and “The Neutrality Escape†(2008) looks into the history of cinema, with another, single-channel HD video. M-Kos interviews Grandmaison about these and other projects.
M-KOS: Can you tell us a little bit about “Projections†your latest exhibition at René Blouin?
Pascal Grandmaison: The work we are seeing today is a follow up to a succession of projects I’ve done around the concept of daylight, I worked on several projects this year, I was really trying to look at the diverse facets of how we receive sunlight, how we interact with light arriving as a physical phenomenon, how light travels in space, and how it may affect us day-to-day.
If it is not sunny, we’re in a bad mood, we always talk about the weather, the lady on TV that tells us not worry, in three days it’ll be fine. How it affects mood… I made a couple of projects about the idea of our changes of attitudes with the changes of light settings. I have to say, this film is also a commission. I was on this show on ARTV called “Vente de Garage†(Carboot Sale) where someone gives you a random object from which you need to do an artistic intervention. I was given a bouquet of artificial flowers by Anne-Marie Cadieux, so I decided to make an animation film and then I said to myself that I wanted interrogate the artificiality of the flowers, I’ll try to render these flowers to life by using light, but the artificial light of the studio flash. I decided to take 24 pictures per second, then for each five or six shot I moved all the lighting set up in the studio, to create a kind of strobe effect, and I also moved the camera two or three millimeters, each shot.
“One Eye Open” (2011) three-channel video HD projection. Installation view at Galerie René Blouin. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie René Blouin.
M: You wanted to create a relation between the artificial flowers and the artificial lighting?
PG: Yeah, it’s more about the technique, the mechanical movement giving an impression of life on the flowers.
M: Is there also a relation to still life as a genre?
PG: Yes, of course the piece can act as a counterpoint to still life but here you really see the texture of the flowers’ fabric, so the very aspect of falsehood is put forward, there is the appearance of a great romantic image but at the same time it is a deception because everything is made of plastic, you see all the flaws, it is very much in between two states.
M: Is this the first time you are showing this piece?
PG: I already presented it in Toronto a month and a half ago, just as a single channel projection, but for this space I think it works better like that, with three projections.
M: And the other piece you are presenting today?
PG: Yes that’s a movie I did in 2008, it was about the idea of the liberation of mechanical constraints, from the big weighty cameras in the history of cinema. Around the time of “Nouvelle Vague†cinema, new smaller camera emerged, and very much helped the emergence of a new cinematic style. I was interested in the shifts made by the new tools, cameras becoming smaller, with synchronized sound. I got particularly interested in the invention of the Éclair NPR camera, which really gave rise to a new wave of fiction cinema but also at the documentary level. There were lots of advances in documentary film that were due to the arrival of these new cameras. I became interested in filming this camera as a metaphor, as if the mechanics of this camera released this spirit of liberty.
“The Neutrality Escape” (2008) 1080P video loop with sound. Installation view at Galerie René Blouin. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie René Blouin.
M: Your exhibition is launching this new space at René Blouin Gallery, how did that happen?
PG: René called me just like that and asked if I was tempted with the idea of opening the new gallery space two months in advance, with my new films. It got done quite spontaneously, like a surprise exhibition, not really prepared. Of course, the light weight and immaterial side of films allow to set up an exhibition like this one in just a few days, surely the medium lends itself well to that.
I remade my film for this new square room, using three projections, which permitted me to test some ideas for future solos that I want to do in the gallery. I have a movie that I’ll be starting to work on in two months, so I’m happy to do this exhibition, it allows me to see how the space works.
M: Do you have something already programmed for the following months?
PG: No but I’ll be working on a new movie, spread over two screens, in black and white, something that will cover the whole of the gallery’s back wall. I’ll start this in a month or two, depending on the weather and lots of other variables. The filming is going to be shot outside in a forest, so I know I need to start it before October, otherwise I’ll have to wait until springtime.
Meanwhile I have another film to finish, I worked with David Altmejd and Pierre Lapointe on a project they did at UQAM Gallery, I made a filmic interpretation of a piece which was more an opera, happening on David’s sculpture.
M: The exhibition currently on at UQAM now?
PG: Yes that’s the one. I filmed that for ten days and from it a film will come to life, an interpretation of David’s sculpture and of Peter’s orchestral piece. It’s not really going to be a documentary but more an interpretation of the show, very abstract, filmed with telephoto lenses. I should finish it around September.
M: And then your next film, in the forest, any collaborators?
PG: Yes, with Yannick Plamondon, he’ll be doing the soundtrack. He works at the music conservatory in Quebec. That one will be presented in a cinema, in Ghent, Belgium. I don’t know the dates yet, possibly I’ll try to show it in Montreal after, I don’t know where, or in what way. It’s really early in the process.
M: You’re just back from a major exhibition in Europe?
PG: It’s a big enough exhibition, at the Casino Luxembourg, in Luxembourg. 13 rooms over two floors of the venues, seven films in individual spaces, and photo projects involving 500 pictures.
“Half of The Darkness” (2010) 360 color inkjet prints. Installation view at Casio Luxemburg Forum d’Art Contemporain. Courtesy of the artist
M: Was it all new work?
PG: I think 75% of it was new, intertwined with other pieces dating from 2002 to today. We are releasing a catalogue of this exhibition in about a month or two, launching it here at René Blouin or in my studio. It’s is a beautiful 400-page publication, with seven translated essays.
M: That must have taken you a little while to finish?
PG: Oh, Yes. There are 256 color reproductions, and all the editing work but it was an interesting process, an enormous amount of management. The catalogue was already very expensive to produce, so I had to get involved at every level otherwise it would have cost another 25% more.
M: Anything else we forgot to mention?
PG: No, not so much in terms of exhibitions, I did a lot in recent months, just a group show coming up this autumn, at Manchester University in England.
Interviewed by Oli Sorenson (Originally in French)
Pascal Grandmaison: Projections
from 6 June 2011
at Galerie René Blouin
2020 rue William
Montréal, Qc
H3J 1R9
514 393 9969
g.rb@videotron.ca
www.galeriereneblouin.com
Tuesday through Friday from 10 am to 6 pm
Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm, and by appointment
Pascal Grandmaison was born 1975 in Montréal. He graduated from Université du Québec à Montréal (BA, 1997). Recent solo exhibitions include: “Half of the Darkness” at Casino Luxembourg, Forum d’art contemporain (2011); “Soleil Differe” Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto (2011); “Lumière visible” Galerie Sequence, Chicoutimi, Quebec (2011); “The Inverted Ghost, Jack Shainman Gallery, NY (2010). Recent group exhibitions include: “Expansion” Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal (2010); CUE: Artists’ Videos, Vancouver Art Gallery (2010). He will be exhibiting in the group show “Dark Matters” at Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester in September 2011. He is represented by Galerie René Blouin, Montreal; Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Pascal Grandmaison’s website: www.pascalgrandmaison.com