PAVITRA WICKRAMASINGHE - AMÉLIE BRISSON-DARVEAU

Opening reception : Thursday, October 22, 2015

17h

This exhibition arises out of a collaboration between Pavitra Wickramasinghe and Amélie Brisson-Darveau which explores image movement by joining two approaches to rhythm and movement, influenced by dance for Amélie and by cinema for Pavitra. The exhibition, which consists of an animation-installation and two series of drawings, is an attempt to confound the gap between new and obsolete technologies, light and dark and space and time.

Due North; pénombres
In the exhibition Titre: Due North; pénombres, the two artists explore the link between cinema and architecture (interior decor, decorations) by investigating panoramic painted wallpaper as a kind of apparatus. Large-format panoramic painted wallpaper for the home (depicting for the most part landscapes) was developed in France and England in the late eighteenth century. At the time, it served to popularise the conquests of the colonial powers and in this way to enable people to travel at a distance. Various scenes covering the walls were juxtaposed in people’s homes and constituted a series of structured images to create continuity. In this sense, the new technology which made it possible to create panoramic wallpaper had an influence on the development of cinema.

The two artists will use these elements to create a video animation based on the idea of panoramic painted wallpaper which can be modulated and adapted to different spaces. The content of the panorama shows an assemblage of landscapes created during residencies in the far north in winter during the polar night. In December 2013, Pavitra was in residence at KIAC (Dawson, Yukon) and Amélie was at USF Verftet (Bergen, Norway).

The Drawings: Line Poem – Alchemy of Light and Geography of Textures

These two series of drawings experiment with the same technique: scratching. Pavrita uses digital technology in Line Poem – Alchemy of Light, while Amélie uses a manual technique in Geography of Textures. In both projects, we wish to blur the gap between the digital and the manual.

Geography of Textures (2015)
In this drawing project, I explore the relations between architecture, geography, the body and darkness. I work to obscure the space between the forms tied to geography and to cartographic semiotics, animal skins, camouflage motifs, architectural motifs and textile structures.

Géographies des textures was inspired by an Italian scratching technique (used principally during the Renaissance and the Art Nouveau period) called sgraffito. This technique for architectural decoration made it possible to bring light into the walls of a stone building by cutting into a cement coating. Out of this idea, I developed a series of animated drawings using ambient light. The meticulously scratched image is squeezed between the two verses [??] of a rotating frame. This enables the light, through the angle of the frame to the wall, to activate the drawings like a slow moving image.

Line Poem – Alchemy of Light (2013)
These works were carried out using automatic drawings done with pencils and paper. They were then scanned and traced to create vectors, transferring the organic hand-drawn lines into straight lines. The vector drawings were engraved on pads of paper using a laser cutting technique. Through this technique, the thickness of the pad of paper and the paper that moves during the process, the final result is a blend of the digital and the organic.

Photo credits : Tanya St-Pierre