EXHIBITIONS 2016

November 5 to December 6, 2016
International Digital Miniprint Exhibition 11
TARA DA-DA
Marie Hélène Giguère, curator
Opening : Thursday, November 10 at 5pm

This exhibition took a fresh look at the Dada phenomenon, 100 years after its birth. Baffling and absurd, the movement reinvents the pictorial composition. It allows the artists to give a new meaning to found objects, to bring manufactured commercial objects in a museum context. Collage and photomontage have arrived, forerunners of digital art itself.

For this exhibition, artists who worked in the spirit of Dada are from Algeria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, India, Japan, Poland, Romania, Serbia and United Kingdom.

Three prizes and two mentions were awarded:
1st prize (Desjardins Prize) to Manon Pelletier, Canada, for Sur ma tête;
2nd prize (Voix Visuelle prize) to Johanne Lafrenière, Canada, for Prière de garder la cerise pour la fin;
3rd prize (Marcil Lavallée prize) to Ovidiu Petca, Roumanie, for Ying-Yang Dada I;
Honorable mention to Richard Miron, Canada for Oracle No 2;
Honorable mention to Izabella Retkowska, Pologne, for Desire.

Also included in the gallery below are the work of:
Florentia Ikonomidou, Greece, Portrait of a Journey
Paula Franzini, Canada, Grater than the Sum of its Parts 1
Hugo Aubin, Canada, Gervaise sortit et rentra chargée comme un mulet
Denis Leclerc, Canada, Dada 2

: Manon Pelletier

: Johanne Lafrenière

: Ovidiu Petca

: Richard Miron

: Izabella Retkowska

: Florentia Ikonomidou

: Paula Franzini

: Hugo Aubin

: Denis Leclerc

The complete list of artists, as well as the curator’s text

Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage, Marcil Lavallée and the City of Ottawa for their support.

September 17 to October 18, 2016
Raymond Aubin
Sous le ciel
Opening: Thursday, September 22 at 5 p.m.

“Sous le ciel” (“under the sky”) is a literal translation of the name China gave itself at the colonial period. The exhibition includes representations of sacred mountains and megacities on long textured Japanese paper, a direct reference to Chinese rolls of paper.

The images, taken from GoogleEarth, have been transformed to resemble Chinese pictorial art: blurriness and sharpness, ink wash and outline. The work establishes a link between modern China and ancient China with a corpus that’s contemporary and rooted in tradition.

: Bei Heng Shan

: Hua Shan

: Nan Heng

: Song Shan

: Tai Shan

: Hua Shan, détail

Each art work is a digital print on Japanese paper, created in 2016, with dimensions 173 x 200 cm.

Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage and the City of Ottawa for their support.

September 30, 2016
At the Gamman House
Journée de la culture
From 6:00 to 9:00pm

August 9 to September 9, 2016
Pentadécagone
Opening: Thursday August 11 at 5:30pm

The exhibition pentadécagone of BRAVO took place from August 9 until September 9, 2016 at the Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle. The opening was Thursday August 11 at 5:30 pm.

This digital art exhibition was conceived of and organized by Yves M. Larocque. The opening was accompanied by African food and sounds. The artists were : Komi Seshie, Doris Lamontagne, Laurent Vaillancourt, Cyrille Rigobert Ogbabo, Kalula Kalambay, Nancy Brandsma, Luce Marquis, Aminata Farmo, Soro Zana and Raymond Aubin. The volunteers were Geoffrey Gurd PhD (Ottawa, Canada) and Moumouni Farmo PhD (Niamey, Niger).

June 27, 2016 to June 15, 2017
At the Centre Richelieu-Vanier
Voix numérique
Alex Leblanc, curator

June 11 2016
Winter in Summer
Izabel Barsive, Curator

On June 11, at 9 p.m., Winter in Summer was projected onto a wall of the Gamman House, located at 306 Cyr Avenue, in Vanier. The projection consisted of a collection of videos curated by Izabel Barsive. The artists Raymond Aubin, Nadine Bariteau, Paula Franzini, Charlotte L’Orage, Doris Lamontagne, Komi Seshie and Laurent Vaillancourt participated in the creation of the videos.

The viewer saw the reflections, sometimes spiritual or philosophical, each artist had on the effect of winter in their everyday lives, as well as their emotions: discomfort facing another season, time of reflection, love becoming hate… The theme forced them to curl up and to, inevitably, immerse themselves the way the cold season does.

The work:

Charlotte L’Orage — Entière
Winter gives birth to spring. The end of a cycle is also its beginning. Entière explores the uneasiness which haunts the process of renewal. Because everything stops? But the life between my fingers is more alive than ever. It immobilizes me with its abundance.

Doris Lamontagne — Nunc dimittis : il est temps.
First snow. Its mesmerizing beauty invites one to play. Winter has arrived. The cold has settled in. It lengthens. It is time to step back, time to reconsider. It is time to express one’s gratitude. It is time to mourn and move on to other things. Happy memories will persist.

Komi Seshie — Sur le pont des pionniers
The sensation of winter!
In the forest in winter, the trees decorated with lacings of snow dazzle us. Noise does not exist any more, our minds become calm. At the crossing of a bridge over a brook, a cold and silent breeze envelops us. The brook water circulating under the crystalline ice no longer breathes. The atmosphere, veiled by a milky membrane, offers a peaceful view.

Laurent Vaillancourt — Amour’haine
Ah, how they are beautiful, the first snowflakes falling softly at the beginning of winter. Then, deep coldness arrives, spoiling our enjoyment. The snow creaks underfoot, we can no longer stand the lack of light, the cold and the heaps of snow make movement awkward.
The video is assembled from my photos of a little spruce. The soundtrack is the creaking of footsteps in the snow. Our eyes like, our ears scream!

Nadine Bariteau — Retrieving
One says sometimes that if one had left an minute earlier or later things would have happened differently. This video is the visual representation of the only moment, a memory of my life that I wish I was able to take back. Retrieving was my first visual testament after having survived a car accident in which I lost my mother Lucille.

Paula Franzini — Duet for winter diary and winter river
This video is a semi-abstract ambiance piece dominated by nostalgia. It is inspired by a winter ’69 diary of my mother’s — particularly one entry about a New Year’s day family ski trip; by current imagery of my surroundings on the Ottawa river in winter — which remind me of my childhood home; and by photos from my childhood taken by my father.

Raymond Aubin — Convergence
Winter causes us to lose our bearings; the scenery is wrapped in cushioned silence and monochromatic erasure.
Convergence presents the long-take of a wandering in the winter forest between a high-key image and a black musical score. The same wandering is replayed in superposition and in transparency at different play speeds.

“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
— Albert Camus

Digital video is becoming more and more accessible through the use of inexpensive tools like smartphones or cameras meant for amateurs that professional artists have adopted in recent years. Editing these videos is also easier thanks to software that is increasingly intuitive. This opens up a limitless field of exploration for artists who create video art pieces. The Winter in Summer project, opened to both experienced and novice artists, obliges them to contemplate winter’s effect on their daily lives, but also on their emotions. For some, this is a spiritual or philosophical reflection. The artists see and hear winter, which they capture despite their preconceived notions and physical constraints. Winter pushes us to curl up if it is experienced here in Canada. Our relationship with the environment requires daily adaptation and challenges us physically and mentally, just like producing the videograms that also alienate us does by compelling artists to master tools that may intimidate them. Winter also forces us to remain humble before nature. Whether you are used to the season or not, immersion is inevitable. And while it was possible to understand winter in regions without snow or ice, for artists from the north, the season still remains etched in the mind’s and body’s memories.
In the summer these audio-visual projects will be projected on a wall of the Gamman House in Ottawa’s Vanier neighbourhood. The public must face a season they often wish to forget, obliging them to rethink the present and relive moments from the past.
These non-narrative art video pieces are evocative. They offer the artist the option of exploring tools without having to strive for perfection, which obsesses creators of commercial projects.
The hours spent on their projects enabled artists to genuinely experience winter, a season many deem to be monochrome. These video art pieces convey the artist and audience’s obligation to commune with winter in a shifted space-time. — Izabel Barsive, curator

The Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage, and the City d’Ottawa for their support.

June 2 to 16, 2016
Voix Jeunes Talents
Opening: Thursday June 2 at 5pm

Curated by Dyana Ouvrard, the exhibition explored the theme of Digital Generation. Digital art opens for us the doors to a magical era, where smart objects and ubiquitous environments become producers of meaning. From this point of view, this art connects us to “the other”, with a dense yet ephemeral connection. For this project Voix Jeunes Talents, Voix Visuelle chose generation Y, the digital natives, the millennials, born between 1980 and 1995. How do these Ottawa’s young artists of the digital avant-garde manage to use technology with curiosity, critical thinking, talent and humour?

Three prizes were awarded at the opening and Walanyo the musician performed. The artists were: Karla Al-Morr, Mathieu Antille, Claire Bernard, Kelly Brian, William Burton, Emmanuelle Crites, Samuel Diotte, Sofia Donato, Marine Dumas, Katrielle Ethier, Lisann George, Anne-Clara Gingras, Rachel Gray, Rachel Guillemette, Lisa-Anne Hachey, Joanna Hajduk, Ivan Jozepovic, Marie-Pascale Lafrenière, Pamela Leszczynski, Jonah Louis, Kelsey McGruer, Nicolas Monet, Eloïse Mutombo, Alex Paradis-Leblanc, Samuel Paré, Pascal Renaud, Tess Ruel, Matthew Senior, Adrienne Scott, Robert Stapleton, Chloé Stiles, Clara Talajavic, Amélie Thériault, Pamela Umutoniwase, Mégane Vermette, and Florence Yee.

Prizes:

1st prize: to Tess Thalissa Ruel for ‘À quand ce peuple va-t-il sortir de sa transparence’

2nd prize: to Kelsey McGruer for her performance

3rd prize: to Marine Dumas for ‘#FoodPornSquare’

Honorable mention: to Samuel Diotte for ‘Camouflage nuageux’

Honorable mention: to Chloé Stiles for ‘We Degrade’

The Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage, the City of Ottawa and the Community Foundation of Ottawa for their support.

May 4 to 7, 2016
Artist: Izabel Barsive
Artists’ Residence at the Fair of Alternative Art in Sudbury (FAAS)

April 9 to May 10, 2016
Agnès Riverin
Planisphère Nord
Opening: Thursday, April 14 at 5 p.m.

Spacetime, memory and grief are three areas of reflection at the foundation of Planisphère Nord, a project in three parts by Agnès Riverin presented at Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle.

The exhibition consists of Planisphère and Astres occlus, where ancient and modern imagery, the natural and the factual, the photographic and the poetic coexist. With cosmological figures, drawings of quantum mechanics, rusty circle on a wood stove and dead birds, the artist is trying to represent the infinity of the universe. In Sémaphore, the artist revives artefacts with a lengthy job of pictorial reproduction. Objects from everyday life (cell phone, scissors, clock) are painted on a wood surface and are a reminder of the complexity of memories, the artificiality of reality’s representation and memory distortion. As the artist says, “looking at the sky is an illusion, what we see is, to a large extent, already past”.

: Planisphère #8

: Planisphère #32

: Astres occlus #12

: Astres occlus #5

: Astres occlus #9

: Sémaphore #1

Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage and the City of Ottawa for their support.

January 16 to February 16, 2016
Pilar Macias
Souhaits
Opening: Thursday, January 21 at 5 p.m.

Here is a New Year’s resolution for 2016: never miss another exhibition at Voix Visuelle! To start off on the right foot, you can come and see this one: Souhaits, from Pilar Macias. After an artist residency in Mexico in 2011, she completed a photography project on ex-voto.

Playing with transposition and transparency, she combined photos to create a tension between shots of a particular reality and the resulting hybrid entities. By bringing together the visible and the invisible, the documentary and the fiction, she created her own ex-voto where culture, material, space, beings and ways of seeing and feeling life meet.

: Demetrio

: Ange Oxotitla

: Briser le coeur

: Frida

: Liberté

: Debout

Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage and the City of Ottawa for their support.

June 16, 2015 to July 2016
Centre Richelieu-Vanier
Voix numérique
François Chalifour, curator

Artists
Nathalie Ampleman, Raymond Aubin, Renée Chevalier, Micheline Couture, Lillianne Daigle, Michèle Debellefeuille, Madeline Deriaz, Maryse Des Aulniers, Cécile Dremière, Gracia Dubé, Élisabeth Dupond, Bruno Gervais, Louis Godbout, Jose Roberto Godoy, Olena Golub, Eugenia Gortchakova, John Graham, Adriana Gutiérrez, Saeko Hanji, Isao Kobayashi, Johanne Lafrenière, Louise Lamirande, Doris Lamontagne, Marie-Paule Le Bohec-Macot, Denis Leclerc , Kinichi Maki, Louise Mercure, Joseph Muscat, Thom O’connor, Csaba Pál, André Paquin, Martine Périat, Henry Pouillon, Izabella Retkowska, Mana Rouholamini, Anne et Gilles Roulant et Guillaume, Jozina Marina Van Hees, Markéta Váradiová, Paul Walty, David Westrop, Pierre Woerner.

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