Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is pleased to present Luc Courchesne: Horizon (Fragments), an exhibition of new installation and sculptural work in situ, and in virtual and augmented reality.
In this exhibition of recent works, Luc Courchesne presents his research on space, time, and point of view. They are fragments of horizons that separate Earth and sky, that touch surfaces or open gaps in walls, bringing into play our observational tendencies and the complex relationships that define being "in this world". Courchesne found his inspiration for this exhibition in the work of Horace Bénédict De Saussure on the landscape, The Vitruvian Man by Léonard de Vinci, and Mertzbau by Kurt Schwitter by reconceiving them through contemporary techniques of spatialization.
Luc Courchesne took part in the emergence of media arts thirty years ago when, as a video artist inspired by a generation of experimental filmmakers such as Michael Snow and Hollis Frampton, he adopted computer technologies. First delving into interactive portraiture, a great artistic tradition re-articulated in a new mould, his work has recently turned to another important genre, that of landscape. With his installations, "panoscopic" images, and a device of his own making used to create a sense of visual immersion, he transforms spectators into a visitors, actors and inhabitants of his experiential crafts.
Born 1952 in Québec, Courchesne received a Bachelor's degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (1974), and a Master of Science in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (1984). He began his explorations in interactive video in 1984 when he co-authored Elastic Movies, one of the earliest experiments in the field, and since produced about 30 installation works and image series including Encyclopedia Chiaroscuro (1987), Portrait One(1990), Family Portrait (1993), Hall of Shadows (1996), Landscape One (1997), Passages (1998), Rendez-vous... (1999), Panoscopic Journal (1999-), Panoscope 360° (2000-), The Visitor: Living by Numbers (2001), Untitled (2004), Where are you? (2005), Horizons (2007), the Shores Series (2008-) and Icons (2009) in a co-creation with artist and choreographer Marie Chouinard, You Are Here (2010), and Vue d'ensemble (2014). Courchesne's work Lightproof Suit can be seen at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Mass.
His work is part of major collections in North America, Europe and Asia and has been shown extensively in galleries and museums worldwide including: the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), Tokyo's InterCommunication Center (ICC), La Villette (Paris), ZKM/Medienmuseum (Karlsruhe), the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the National Gallery of Canada, the Fundacion La Caixa (Barcelona) and Beijing's National Art Museum of China.
