Art in Montreal

If the previous article on MOMENTA addressed the problem of the use of imagery to construct a narrative and the ways in which the image as art undermined its reterritorialization as “culture,” this article looks at this in a more basic way through how a series of exhibitions highlight a much more foundational aspect of the image. This is done both technically and thematically. One of the more blatant means by which this is introduced is a stress on the pixel as a kind of “building block” for the digital image. As a term, pixel comes from popular cinematic discourse (“pix” as plural for motion pictures) that was wedded to “el” (element). As one of the smallest elements of a digital image (raster or dot matrix), it contains a sample of an image (whether indexical or strictly synthetic). In printing or digital imaging, their appearance varies greatly according to resolution and to how they have been gridded. They can be rendered as squares, dots, lines, etc. The stress on the pixel as ...

Before making a series of generalizing statements about these three exhibitions, it is incumbent on me to provide you with their statements of rationalization, each of which avoids any justification for their mode of display, at best vaguely waving it off as “ experimentation”:

At Occurrence , Angela Grauerholz’s The Empty S(h)elf, deuxième itération , follows on from the first’s “exploration into concepts of subjective experience and the role of language in self-definition.” This time, The Empty S(h)elf engages the archive in a more direct reflection on the role of language and subjectivity: here concerned with how the acquisition of language defines one’s sense of self and simultaneously separates self and other—the primordial being that exists outside of language. In this instance, the “other” is represented by the main character in a story by Franz Kafka entitled “A Report to an Academy”: an ape recounts how he survived and escaped life in a zoo by mimicking human actions, eventually adopting speech to become a circus performer. An analogy to the construction of the self and even the “escape” into becoming an artist might be suggested. Created in collaboration with graphic designer Réjean Myette and with sound elements by Melissa Grey and David Morn...