Grégory Chatonsky and Dominique Sirois. Memories Center. 2014-2015, installation générative en réseau, variable dimensions, courtesy of the artists and XPO Gallery.

Grégory Chatonsky and Dominique Sirois. Memories Center. 2014-2015, installation générative en réseau, variable dimensions, courtesy of the artists and XPO Gallery.

Room 1

Grégory Chatonsky

Dominique Sirois

Memories center

EXHIBITION /
SEPTEMBER 3 TO OCTOBER 11, 2015

** EXCEPTIONALLY CLARK
WILL ALSO BE OPENED ON
SUNDAYS, 12H TO 5PM,
DURING LE MOIS DE LA PHOTO **

OPENING /
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 8PM

ARTIST TALK /
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 3PM

Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal presents, in partnership with Centre CLARK, Memories Center by Grégory Chatonsky and Dominique Sirois.

Several advanced neurological research facilities are currently hard at work looking for ways to visualize brain activity in the form of figurative images, as the first step toward materializing the fantasy of creating a machine to project dreams. Meanwhile, artists such as Grégory Chatonsky and Dominique Sirois are pursuing a similar goal by poetic means. With Memories Center (2014–15), they have developed a device that brings us closer to the perception of mental images. Using a database of twenty thousand dreams, compiled by Adam Schneider and G. William Domhoff at the University of California, the software generates new dream sequences, reads them, and then searches the Internet for images corresponding to the selected keywords. Dreamt situations or events are externalized and expressed as short picture stories, with a structure similar to that of a storyboard or a succinct photo novella, pulsating, perhaps, with the tortured sensibilities of a David Lynch.

The process devised by Chatonsky and Sirois is rooted in the exuberance of archives (the dream bank, the infinite abundance of images on the Internet) and celebrates the germinal condition often characteristic of the post-photographic creation. More importantly, though, above and beyond the iconic implications regarding the nature of visual thinking and the future of images, this experience hovers over high-risk areas in humanistic and democratic terms. In fact, it anticipates various recurring dystopian nightmares in which centralized power exercises control over people’s minds - maybe producing visually prophylactic effects.

For its 14th edition Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal explores The Post-Photographic Condition, a theme conceived by Catalan guest curator, Joan Fontcuberta. The post-photographic era is characterized by the massification of images and by their circulation and availability online. Digital technology not only provokes ontological fractures in photography, but also engenders profound changes in its social and functional values. Deployed in 16 exhibition sites, the biennial will feature the works of 29 Canadian and international artists who critically react to this massive presence of images and their unlimited access in our current visual culture.
 

 

Grégory Chatonsky was born in Paris in 1971; he lives and works in Montreal and Paris. He holds degrees in multimedia from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and from Paris I La Sorbonne. In 1994, he founded Incident.net, a net.art collective based in France, Canada, and Senegal. Dominique Sirois was born in 1976; she lives and works in Montreal. She holds a master’s degree in visual and media arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal, and her work has been exhibited in galleries in Canada and abroad. Chatonsky and Sirois have presented their collaborative projects in many venues, such as iMAL in Brussels (2015), the Unicorn Art Center in Beijing (2015), the Centre des Arts d’Engheins-les-Bains (2014), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (2013), and Bazaar Compatible Program in Shanghai (2012). Grégory Chatonsky is represented by XPO Gallery in Paris. 
www.chatonsky.net
www.dominiquesirois.net
www.xpogallery.com

This exhibition is presented with the financial support of the Consulat général de France à Québec,the Institut français, SSHRC and Hexagram. The artists would like to thank Adam Schneider, G. William Domhoff (University of California) and Nicolas Reeves.