Photo: Eduardo Ralickas

2 rooms equal size, 1 empty, with secretary,(1)

An exhibition curated by Sophie Bélair Clément

September 27, 2012 - January 26, 2013

Opening: Thursday, October 4, 2012 at 6PM

 

(1) “General floor plan for Gallery. 2 rooms equal size, 1 empty, with secretary, phone, desk, file cabinet and catalog. The other has 2 works of each artist.” Seth Siegelaub, guestbook pages and follow-up notes, I.A.43, “January 5-31, 1969” [The “January Show”], The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.

Raphaël Huppé Alvarez, Vincent Bonin, Marie Claire Forté and David Tomas have agreed to participate in an exhibition organized by Sophie Bélair Clément, who has accepted an invitation by curator Eduardo Ralickas.

The participants would like to thank Adrian Piper for her correspondence; Éric Legendre for the transmission of information; Julie Fournier Lévesque for her work of cultural mediation; k.g. Guttman, Kelly Keenan and Alanna Kraaijeveld for their choreographic support; Marjolaine Bourduas for the studio space; as well as Jon Knowles for the chair, Jo-Anne Balcaen and Audrée Guérin, PRIM, the set design technicians at Radio-Canada, and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

 

Sophie Bélair Clément While I was manipulating the book that David Tomas had photographed, I noticed that in the image the book lay open exactly at its central pages. Observing the fabric of the beach chair brings to mind the moiré effect that occurred at a certain scale when the image was being printed. My work questions artistic license and historiography; over the past several years, I have developed projects in collaboration with cultural workers and friends, including David Jacques (sound effects), Olivier Girouard (composition), Olivier Maranda (percussions), Kingdom Shore (a string and electronic quartet), Benoit Bourdeau (carpentry), Simon Guibord (graphic design), Vincent Bonin, et al.

Vincent Bonin lives and works in Montreal. He is the curator of Documentary Protocols (1967–1975)a project comprised of two exhibitions held at Concordia University’s Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (2007 and 2008) and a publication (2010) that addresses the rise of the first artists’ collectives and artist-run centres in Canada. He co-curated (with Grant Arnold, Catherine Crowston, Barbara Fischer, Michèle Thériault, and Jayne Wark) the exhibition Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada (1965–1980), which is on a pan-Canadian tour since September 2010. In collaboration with Catherine J. Morris, he also curated an exhibition project on American art critic Lucy R. Lippard entitled Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, which opened in September 2012 at the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art. He has also organized exhibitions in close collaboration with artists (Jon Knowles in 2010 and, more recently, Sophie Bélair Clément) in which professional categories are undermined. His texts have been published in the anthology Ouvrir le document : Enjeux et pratiques de la documentation dans les arts visuels contemporains (Dijon, Les presses du réel, 2010) and in Institutions by Artists(Fillip, Vancouver, 2012), among others.

Charles and Ray Eames are among the most important American designers of the twentieth century. They are best known for their ground-breaking contributions to architecture, furniture design (e.g., the Eames Chair), industrial design and manufacturing, and the photographic arts. In the early 1950s, they extended their interest and skill in photography into filmmaking. They created over eighty-five short films (2–30 minutes) ranging in subjects from tops to the world of Franklin and Jefferson, from simple sea creatures to the explanation of mathematical and scientific concepts, such as the workings of the computer (for more information, see http://www.eamesoffice.com/charles-and-ray).

Marie Claire Forté focuses on choreographic space ; details are of particular interest to her. 1 x White High Neck PVC Catsuit (model 20241); Size: Please Select…; Height (Inch): 72; Weight (Kg): 65; Sleeve (Inch): 33; Leg Length (Inch): 3 ; Bust (Inch): 36; Waist (Inch): 30; Hip (Inch): 40; Shoulder (Inch): 17; Neck Size (Inch): 15; Thigh Size (Inch): 23. These measures where taken rather quickly in the afternoon of August 21st, 2012, with some grey sewing thread and a small, pink, Tuf-E-Nuf measuring tape. She has collaborated with Alanna Kraaijeveld, Catherine Lalonde, Sophie Bélair Clément, Vincent Bonin and Projet BK, and dances for Louise Bédard and Ame Henderson. From 2004 to 2008, she danced for various choreographers within the now defunct Groupe Lab, where she also trained under Peter Boneham. In parallel, she works as a translator for artists and arts organizations. She also writes and is a dance instructor.

Julie Fournier Lévesque is not Adrian Piper. Adrian Piper is not Julie Fournier Lévesque.

Raphaël Huppé Alvarez works on eclectic projects in collaboration with artists with singular artistic sensibilities. He has a passion for materials and pays close attention to details. Throughout his collaborations, he has developed a sense for each project’s unique character. He has taken part in the production of various projects in the visual arts, cinema and design. After seven years of work as a freelance carpenter, he is now studying architecture, a profession that haunts his dreams since he is old enough to draw a hammer.

Éric Legendre Born 1969. Lives and works in Montreal. Father’s profession: trade unionist (deceased); mother’s profession: hat maker (alive and well). One sister and three brothers. Has been in a relationship for seventeen years and is married (legally). Italian ancestry. Between 1987 and 1999, I was a record dealer, a librarian, a cable car operator, a warehouse keeper, and an instructor of an initiation to photography and history of photography course (before the digital age). Since 1999, I strive to balance theories and practices stemming from an expanded field that encompasses archival studies, history, information science, the arts and culture. Over the years, I have become a specialist in—but not exclusively—artistic practices relating to (new) technologies, to audio/visual domains. In 2003, I purchased Adrian Piper’s Out of Order, Out of Sight (volumes I and II) in a second-hand bookstore located in a shopping centre (in Ottawa) after having attended a lecture on the preservation of electronic media. I gave the two books to Julie Fournier Lévesque in celebration of her 30th birthday. I have known Vincent Bonin since November 2001. In 2012, I work at Artexte.

Adrian Piper (Adrian Margaret Smith Piper, b. 1948) is a first-generation Conceptual artist and analytic philosopher. She attended the New Lincoln School throughout grammar school and high school, and the Art Students’ League during high school. She began exhibiting her artwork internationally at the age of twenty, and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1969. While continuing to produce and exhibit her artwork, she received a B.A. in Philosophy with a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Musicology from the City College of New York in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1981 under the supervision of John Rawls; and studied Kant and Hegel with Dieter Henrich at the University of Heidelberg in 1977-1978. Her formal education lasted a total of 27 years. (For more details, see http://www.adrianpiper.com/biography.shtml.)

Eduardo Ralickas is interested in the various ways in which speech acts are delegated to—and relayed by—objects, signs and functions. On May 1st, 2012, he was appointed Associate Curator at Artexte. On May 2nd, he wrote an e-mail to Sophie Bélair Clément inviting her to develop an exhibition project. Between May 3 and September 19, two hundred twenty seven e-mails were exchanged. On September 20, he wrote the present autobiographical note in the form of a citation in response to Sophie Bélair Clément’s e-mail sent on September 17. “‘The speech act in which ‘I’ is spoken will appear, every time it is reproduced, as the very same act to the one who hears it; however, to the one who utters it, it is always a new act.’ Thus it is ‘you’ who fills the empty identity of form, who transforms [opère] the actual difference between the various ‘I’s’ into identity. It is ‘you’ who makes [constitue] the ‘I’ into ‘me’.” (Émile Benveniste, quoted by Louis Marin in La voix excommuniée, Paris: Galilée, 1981, p. 26–27).

David Tomas is an artist and anthropologist. His works and performances have been shown in Canada, the United States and Europe. His latest book is entitled Escape Velocity: Alternative Instruction Prototype for Playing the Knowledge Game (Wedge Publication, 2012).