Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is proud to present for the second year in a row a Featured Exhibition of Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival: Luminous Fields by Marie-Jeanne Musiol.
For 20 years, Marie-Jeanne Musiol has been capturing the luminous imprints of plants with electromagnetic photography. She is presently assembling an extensive energy herbarium consisting of hundreds of photos of specimens culled from the eastern Laurentian forest. Her work renders visible the light fields surrounding biological bodies and uncovers the presence of cosmic configurations enfolded in the minute details of photographed leaves
Her installation at Centre Space (Toronto) resorts to a convergence of analog, digital and video processes that show the energy corona of plants and of metal circles evoking the universe of stars and planets. Wall modules showcasing small backlit positives create a space reminiscent of study cabinets inviting the viewer to observe scaled artefacts. Although not visible, the backlighting material housed in the modules, a phosphorus sheet activated by electricity, is reminiscent of other bioluminescent phenomena at work in the natural world.
A short video loop translates into real time the activity of highly mobile fields around plants with a soundtrack of live sap ascending a Manitoba maple. In the PFOAC Video Annex, screening of Mirrors of the Cosmos (2006) provides another window inside the light fields of plants.
Luminous Fields aspires to create a space for inner contemplation of nature while also considering traditional presentation of botanical specimens and philosophical debate on the status of plants (erroneously thought to have no nervous system). Visible light fields also invite speculation around the possibility of subtle information transfers between dimensions in a holographic universe.
The artist wishes to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council for the presentation of this exhibition.
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Marie-Jeanne Musiol's energy herbarium and the mirror images of the cosmos that she extracts from the light corona of plants have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Canada, the USA, Europe and Asia (ZKM/Karlsruhe; Medialab/Madrid; La Maison Européenne de la photographie/Paris; Oakland University Art Gallery/Rochester; Montreal Botanical Garden; International Techno Exhibition, Taipei/Taiwan). Her works are included in several public and private collections (Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Canada Council Art Bank, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ottawa Art Gallery).
The Gallery thanks SODEC for its support.
