Post Image Lab

Keep an eye out for the latest issue of Ciel Variable, featuring the work of Cluster Co-Director, Marisa Portolese. For more information visit the magazine’s website or Facebook page.

Marisa Portolese, Elke, 2015, from the series / de la série Belle de jour III, c­prints / épreuves couleur, 127 × 102 cm

The research facilities at the Post Image Cluster are accessible to all members of the Milieux Institute, as well as to Faculty and Graduate Students from Fine Arts. The lab offers scanning and editing stations with calibrated monitors, printers for both inkjet and chromogenic photo paper, and as well a 5000 K viewing both for evaluating prints. If you are planning a project or are just curious about the facilities, stop by at the Open House on Wednesday September 28 from 11am to 3pm. Staff will be on site, and happy to answer questions you might have.

Here are some images from Jacques Bellavance’s presentation where he walked us through his initial discovery of Thames Town.

Photos: Matthew Brooks, courtesy of Milieux Institute

Upcoming event – May 4, 2016

THE POST IMAGE RESEARCH CLUSTER PRESENTS:
JACQUES BELLAVANCE – FIRST CONTACT

WEDNESDAY MAY 4, 2016 @ 12:00 noon

Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology
Concordia University
1515 Saint Catherine Street W.
EV Building, Room 10.715

“It is with this in mind that I undertook the hour long subway ride towards the outskirts of Shanghai, where the normally fluorescent lights of the rail system were replaced by the partly clouded sky as the train returned above ground. The dense metropolis slowly faded into rice fields, run down shacks and construction sites erecting clusters of high-rise apartments.

[…]

As I was following the road that led to the city center, I asked myself whether I was being directed. Unlike an actual city where the core is usually accessible through multiple routes, Thames Town’s streets forced you, much like a roller coaster, to contour a series of residential compounds before letting you reach its public spaces. Making the citizen walk by these mansions had every intention of generating desires: the desire to reside in these lavish houses or to at least take a closer look; desires that were soon crushed by a security guard dressed in a full Beefeater-inspired uniform. A Chinese man who, as he watched over the mostly deserted houses, took his job very seriously.”

Excerpts from First contact, Thames Town, from personal travel notes, 2013

Untitled 255, from Thames Town Dérive, chromogenic print, 30 in x 40 in, 2013

This lunchtime discussion will delve into the preliminary research and points of reference of Bellavance’s long-term project, shedding light onto his sustained artistic involvement with the city of Shanghai and its non-spaces; this engagement with this specific city as subject eventually evolved into the solo exhibition One City, Nine Towns, currently on display in the FOFA Gallery’s York Corridor Vitrines, now and until May 27, 2016.

Jacques Bellavance is an artist whose work primarily revolves around narrative-based photography, where indexical, staged and constructed images are central to the progression of the story. His practice is multidisciplinary and predominantly involves photography and sculpture. Currently researching themes of simulacrum, reconstruction and identity, his photographs draw upon the intertwining of documentary-style and narrative driven self-exploration to unearth aspects of his Chinese heritage. He is a current MFA candidate in Studio Arts, concentration Photography.

http://jacquesbellavance.com/

On March 30, 2016 was officially launched the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia. Learn about the Institute and its various research clusters – including yours truly the Post Image Research Cluster – here.

Photos: Matthew Brooks, courtesy of Milieux Institute

Some images from Karen Kraven’s presentation where she generously shared her current research interests and wide-ranging points of reference – from the Palio di Siena, to the samba schools of Rio de Janeiro, to Hélio Oiticica’s Parangolés.

Photos: Matthew Brooks, courtesy of Milieux Institute

Upcoming event – March 23, 2016

THE POST IMAGE RESEARCH CLUSTER PRESENTS:
KAREN KRAVEN – THE JOCKEY IS A PEACOCK IN THE WORLD OF SPORT

WEDNESDAY MARCH 23, 2016 @ 6:00 pm

Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology
Concordia University
1515 Saint Catherine Street W.
EV Building, Room 10.715

Karen Kraven will focus her discussion on abstraction of the body (pattern, camouflage, optical illusion and distortion) through her current research surrounding costumes and clothing worn for carnival, sport and dance. Geometric Abstraction, rooted in movements of Concretism and Op Art, now summons an antiquated technological fervour mixed with a contemporary desire to disappear.

The research began recently while in residency in Rio de Janeiro, in the context of the international residency program of the art centre Diagonale and will continue with an upcoming residency in New York City in collaboration with the Dance Notation Bureau and the Conseil des arts et des Lettres du Québec.

Found image, The Jockey is a Peacock in the World of Sport in Sports Illustrated, August 30, 1954, photographed by Richard Meek

Karen Kraven is an artist currently based in Montréal. Her installations include found images, photography and sculpture that reference sports and camouflage through investigations of clothing, sports equipment and abstract patterns. Photographs and images are a way to think about form through an exploration of optical illusions and large scale transformations in works that sometimes combine direct photography, scanning and appropriation.

Recent solo exhibitions include the ICA at the Maine College of Art, Portland, Mercer Union and 8eleven, Toronto, Parisian Laundry, Darling Foundry and Centre Clark, Montréal. Her work has recently been included in group exhibitions at Clint Roenisch Gallery and Diaz Contemporary in Toronto. Upcoming this fall is a group exhibition at La Friche, Marseilles. Her work belongs to numerous collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, RBC, TD Bank Group and Banque Nationale. Kraven has participated in residencies at Largo das Artes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the Banff Centre, Alberta. She has received numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Québec Council for the Arts and is represented by Parisian Laundry in Montréal.

http://www.karenkraven.com/

Some images from our well-attended March 2 event, featuring speakers Andreas Rutkauskas and Thomas Kneubühler.

Upcoming event – March 2, 2016

THE POST IMAGE RESEARCH CLUSTER PRESENTS:
ANDREAS RUTKAUSKAS + THOMAS KNEUBÜHLER IN CONVERSATION: STUDIO MODELS AND WORKING PROCESSES

WEDNESDAY MARCH 2, 2016 @ 6:00 pm

Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology
Concordia University
1515 Saint Catherine Street W.
EV Building, Room 10.715

In conjunction with his exhibition Borderline presented at the FOFA Gallery from February 20 to April 8, Andreas Rutkauskas will engage in a conversation with Thomas Kneubühler about studio models and the resulting research process. An MFA graduate of Concordia University and former faculty member in the Studio Arts Department, Rutkauskas recently relocated to the Rocky Mountains to take on the role of Photography Facilitator at The Banff Centre. Rutkauskas will discuss how this change of location and facilities has influenced both his research and his working process, and led to an exhibition developed and produced on site at the Banff Centre as well as at the Post Image Cluster here at Concordia. Kneubühler will talk about VIA in Basel, Switzerland, an open studio model where space and equipment are shared, and the collaborations which resulted out of it.

Pocket Hints, letterpress edition of 200. Reproduction of a U.S. Customs brochure from 1981 found in the abandoned border crossing in Houlton, Maine.

Andreas Rutkauskas’ artistic approach focuses on the effect of a range of technologies on the perception, development, and exploi- tation of landscapes. Through the use of photography, video, and mapping, his recent projects address the impact of Internet-based research on wilderness recreation, cycles of industrialization and deindustrialization in Canada’s oil patch, and the subtle technologies used to survey the Canada/US border.

His work has been exhibited in solo and group contexts nationally and abroad including at Oslo8 Contemporary Photography in Basel, Switzerland, Gallery 400 in Chicago, and TRUCK Contemporary Art in Calgary. His project «Virtually There» was featured in the 14th edition of Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, and he was a recent finalist for the Gabriele Basilico International Prize of Architecture and Landscape Photography.

www.andreasrutkauskas.com

Thomas Kneubühler’s current projects deal with Canada’s far North, where he investigates how technology and the extraction of natural resources effect the people and the land. Originally from Switzerland, he has been living in Montreal since the year 2000, where he com- pleted a MFA at Concordia University in 2003. His projects have been presented in exhibitions in both Europe and North America, among others at the Musée d’art contemporain (2011), Centre culturel canadien, Paris (2012), the Centre Pasquart Bienne (2014), the Manif d’art 7, Québec (2014), and the Videonale.15 at the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2015). In 2011 he was awarded the Pratt & Whitney Canada Prize of the Conseil des arts de Montréal, and in 2012 the Swiss Art Award by the Ministry of Culture Switzerland.

www.thomaskneubuhler.com