Marie-Jeanne Musiol : I see stars in the deep dark

In this new exhibition-synthesis, Marie-Jeanne Musiol brings together the large body of radiant imprints she has been capturing since 1994, and scatters the glowing leaves that populate her energy herbarium on gallery walls. 

More than a hundred unpublished images, a new video, and illuminated display cases reminiscent of old study cabinets, unfold in space this radiant forest that also opens onto celestial panoramas that the artist extracts from enfolded details in plants. The leaves of numerous species hailing from the Laurentian forest appear in the photos surrounded by light coronas. With a camera-less process akin to the photogram, their reactions are recorded by direct contact on a film placed in an electromagnetic field. 

Marie-Jeanne Musiol pursues her research in a historical continuum, at the intersection of photography and electricity applied to the study of plants. She elaborates what could be a first energy botany, in the wake of the cyanotypes of algae and ferns produced by the pioneering Anna Atkins (1799-1871). Her electrodynamic photograms, which explore both the diversity of the plant world and its reactivity, offer a transformative vision of the universe where matter and light cohabit. The artist directs our gaze to the porous boundaries of plants - fluid and dematerialized matter processing information from ambient light networks.

The Radiant Forest: An Energy Herbarium, an art bookpublished by Editions pfoac, draws this creative arc leading from the world of leaves to celestial universes.

For the past 25 years, Marie-Jeanne Musiol's work has been shown in museums and galleries in Europe, Asia, the United States and Canada.  Her installations and videos have been featured among others at La Maison européeenne de la photographie and Palais de Tokyo (Paris), ZKM (Karlsruhe), TENT Rotterdam,  Photon+ Techno Art (Taipei) and Oakland University Art Gallery (Rochester). Her photos and light works have also been exhibited at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (Toronto), the Baie-St-Paul International Symposium of Contemporary Art, in Laval metro stations (Poussières d'étoiles), and more recently at the National Gallery of Canada.

The artist thanks Phil Rose and Michael Caffrey (Daïmôn) for their collaboration.

The gallery thanks SODEC for its contribution to the production of this  exhibition.