Caroline Gagné Clairières
Caroline Gagné, image fixe tirée de l’installation Autofading_Se disparaître, 2021
Caroline Gagné’s exhibition Clairières is the sum of two of her most recent installations, Autofading_Se disparaître (2019-2021) and Bruire (2019-2021). The artist’s observation of her environment, where she notes the states and nuances of atmospheres and spaces, is the basis of her creative process. The resulting works are poetic interfaces that seek first and foremost to connect with their audiences. With the means at her disposal — sound, image, matter and movement — the artist depicts nature in technological environments.
Autofading_Se disparaître uses virtual reality and non-linear sound composition technologies to poetically interrogate the presence of humans in their environment. Wearing the headset, the spectator is plunged into the heart of a forest generated in point cloud data, which evolves according to the attitude of observation and attention that they favour. The more the observer slows down their gestures and holds a posture of observation, the more the micromovements of the forest become perceptible and multiply. Thus, the sounds and the animals seem to come closer. This quietude, full of delicate details, collapses as soon as the observer makes a sudden move. The storm rises, leaving only shadows of vanishing particles.
In Bruire, an iPhone plays a sound composition while receiving data from a vibration sensor placed nearby. The idea is to make these vibrations visible by inducing the resulting tremor in images shown on other phones placed nearby. Receiver and transmitter of invisible data, social link or tool, the iPhone interests Gagné by its phenomenality and by the place it occupies in today’s “connected” daily life, while “disconnecting” the user from a certain physicality of existence that sound and vibration have the potential to reactivate.
Autofading_Se disparaître
Technological integration: Renaud Gervais
Recordings : Caroline Gagné and Christophe Havard
Original music: Christophe Havard
Modeling and fabrication of the rock: Carl-Dave Lagotte
Co-production: Sporobole center en art actuel, 0/1-Hub numérique Estrie and La Chambre Blanche
With the support of Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
Bruire
Programming and technological integration: Alexandre Burton, Artificiel
With the support of Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
Caroline Gagné, image fixe tirée de l’installation Autofading_Se disparaître, 2021
Caroline Gagné lives and works in Quebec City and Saint-Jean-Port-Joli. She holds a bachelor’s degree in visual arts (1998) and an interdisciplinary master’s degree in art with distinction (2012) from Université Laval. She has participated, among others, in the Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine (Trois-Rivières), the biennale Manif d’art and Mois Multi (Quebec City), festival Temps d’images (Montreal), FIMAV (Victoriaville), and Instants fertiles (Saint-Nazaire, France). Her work has also been shown at Occurrence (Montreal), Stewart Hall Art Gallery (Pointe-Claire), Galerie de l’UQAM (Montreal), Sporobole (Sherbrooke), Stryx Gallery (Birmingham, England), Lieu and VU (Quebec City), and Daïmon (Gatineau). In 2011, the sound installation CARGO earned her an Arts and Culture Award of Excellence from the City of Québec. In 2020, her piece Le bruit des icebergs was acquired by the national collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal for inclusion in its permanent collection. Active in her community, she was the artistic director of the artist-run Avatar centre from 2013 to 2019.
Caroline Gagné, Clairières, 2022. Photo : Paul Litherland
Caroline Gagné, Clairières, 2022. Photo : Paul Litherland
Caroline Gagné, Clairières, 2022. Photo : Paul Litherland
Caroline Gagné, Clairières, 2022. Photo : Paul Litherland
Caroline Gagné, Clairières, 2022. Photo : Paul Litherland
Caroline Gagné, Clairières, 2022. Photo : Paul Litherland
Caroline Gagné, Clairières, 2022. Photo : Paul Litherland
Caroline Gagné, Clairières, 2022. Photo : Paul Litherland
