Marc-Antoine K.Phaneuf

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf is interested in objects from popular culture for their narrative potential. He assembles collections of various specimens of a specific object to compare their many differences and similarities and to map out their possible forms. Recently, Phaneuf has tended to repurpose these objects, mixing types and appropriating them to intervene in their nature—transforming them into something radically new that goes beyond mere display. Drawing on the traditions of the ready-made and the use of quotation, Phaneuf seeks to poeticize mundane realities and to invent stories and imaginary worlds based on ordinary, everyday objects—whether kitsch or laughable—that reflect North American popular culture, its myths, and its fads. Playful yet conceptual, his work raises anthropological and sociological questions by examining the relationships we maintain with text, image, and object.

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf is an artist and author. Since 2006, his work has been exhibited at numerous artist-run centers, galleries, and museums in Quebec, including Centre Clark, L’Œil de Poisson, Articule, the Musée régional de Rimouski, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, and Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran. In 2013, he was nominated for the Pierre-Ayot Prize—awarded by the City of Montreal and the Association of Contemporary Art Galleries to celebrate an emerging Montreal artist. He has published three poetry collections with Le Quartanier, including *Téléthons de la Grande Surface (Inventaire catégorique)* in 2008—a finalist for the Émile-Nelligan Prize—and *Cavalcade en cyclorama* in 2013, which was written during an eight-day writing performance. He frequently participates in poetry readings that have taken him, with Productions Rhizome, as far as France and Belgium. He lives and works in Montreal.