Martin Désilets
L'index
Martin Désilets holds a master's degree in visual arts from UQAM. His work has been the subject of several exhibitions, notably in Montreal, Longueuil, Laval, Joliette, Toronto, Basel, Paris, Berlin and Beirut. He has held numerous artist residencies in New York, Paris, Berlin and elsewhere. In the upcoming months, he will occupy the Quebec studios in London and Berlin. His works can be found in many private and public collections, including those of the Photo Elysée - Musée cantonal pour la photographie in Lausanne, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
The artist would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Longueuil, The Rooms Art Gallery, le Centre Sagamie and its team, and especially Émili Dufour, without whom this project would have been impossible.
In the small room of the Galerie B-312, Martin Désilets presents a first major deployment of L'index, consisting of a selection of about 200 examples from several hundreds made since 2016. The challenge of this photographic project, or its quest, is to understand the index of all the colors of the visible, which are isolated at the time of shooting. Proceeding by trial and error, the artist uses different processes: long exposure time, out of focus, use of a case without lens, etc. The experimental aspect of the project is more noticeable at the next stage, when the artist stops the printer during printing. This results in a gradient leading to a thin margin of blank paper. This blending of colours is fundamental. Digital data remains unexploited while the process and accumulation of colours used to print monochrome is revealed. All of the same small format, the fragments are installed closely next to each other. Their deployment adapts to the size of the room and creates a rhythm, from one to the other, thanks to the passage from the gradient to a plain colour. Not different from the scanning of the printer, the line formed, also evoking that of time or the horizon, brings us back to the genesis of L’index. Indeed, the setting in space that encourages the spectator to move is not distant to the fact that the idea of the project was born in Gros-Morne National Park in Newfoundland during walks in the landscape, during which multiple aesthetic experiences were rising for the photographer. Until very recently, this corpus was perceived by Martin Désilets as one of three long-term projects spanning several years, along with Dark Matter and Lieux-monuments, and which, theoretically, would have no end. However, technology seems to have decided otherwise, since the old printer that tolerated these repeated interruptions no longer works. By October 22, 2022, the Galerie B-312 invites you to come and contemplate each of the colours chosen for this exhibition and the polychromy of the whole.
—JOANNIE BOULAIS
[free translation]
Martin Désilets holds a master's degree in visual arts from UQAM. His work has been the subject of several exhibitions, notably in Montreal, Longueuil, Laval, Joliette, Toronto, Basel, Paris, Berlin and Beirut. He has held numerous artist residencies in New York, Paris, Berlin and elsewhere. In the upcoming months, he will occupy the Quebec studios in London and Berlin. His works can be found in many private and public collections, including those of the Photo Elysée - Musée cantonal pour la photographie in Lausanne, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
The artist would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Longueuil, The Rooms Art Gallery, le Centre Sagamie and its team, and especially Émili Dufour, without whom this project would have been impossible.