1983

Mériol Lehmann

1983

  • Exposition
© Mériol Lehmann, Galerie B-312—1983, video installation, 2010—Photo : Jean-Marc Fredette

Born in Switzerland, Mériol Lehmann has lived and worked in Quebec for several years. After studying music, he developed a self-taught interdisciplinary practice in audio art, new media and photography. His work, both in installation and performance, was presented notably at Mois Multi (2009, 2010, 2012),&Festival de cinéma des trois Amériques(2009), L'Oeil de Poisson (2011), Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville(2011) and Regart (2012). He has also been shown in Europe, including at Vooruit (Gent, 2006), Maelström festival (Brussels, 2011), Maison de la Poésie de Namur (2011) and Maison de la Poésie de Paris (2011). In addition to his practice, Mériol Lehmann also been a collaborator in a multitude of new media projects and made sound designs for theatre and dance.

15 novembre 2012 au 15 décembre 2012

-OPENING THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2012 AT 5 PM

Gallery B-312 is pleased to present in it’s small room, a new media work by Mériol Lehmann, a Swiss artist living and working in Québec City. For the artist, 1983 marks his arrival in Québec; the eponymous work is born from a reflection on the relation that a migrant can maintain with the territory, the emotional resonance of a place that has been appropriated, the memories that an environment can evoke. In 2009, Lehmann started this project by taking some three hundred photographs of his homeland.-To turn this series of photographs into a moving image, the artist used a custom-made software allowing him to superimpose transparently dozens of photos and adjust both the content and the magnitude of this overlay in time. The evanescent aspect of the image gives the work a pictorial aspect that could be compared to sfumato. A certain visual ambiguity settles, the landscape becomes almost abstract.-Vaporous and uncertain, the landscapes of Lehmann illustrate the constructive nature of the interpretation of the image: among other things, it is informed by the viewer’s memories, expectations and affect. The places chosen by the artist often contain traces, clues of human presence and significant changes they can bring to the environment. To this effect, is there a divide between rural perception and its reality? By blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy, marks an open space, a lighthouse where one sometimes believes to perceive the changing reflections of our own relationship to the world.