La conjugaison des pensées complexes de Louis Bouvier – CAM on tour
Performances on Sunday, March 29 at 3 p.m.
About the exhibition
La conjugaison des pensées complexes is an installation of sculptural works with integrated sound devices. Using the principles of the theremin, an electronic musical instrument activated by the proximity of the performer’s body, the sculptures come to life as visitors pass by. The works are arranged in the space to create an unusual path. Formally, they are strongly influenced by several modernist and contemporary design movements. The artist’s aim is to produce, at first glance, a functional and recognizable feeling, while transgressing the utilitarian meaning of the works so that a certain strangeness emanates from them. As a common thread, he uses the concept of anachronistic montage, creating a backdrop that unites the project’s different layers and references and producing an atmosphere that confronts different cultures and eras, much like our everyday aesthetic experience.
La conjugaison des pensées complexes offers a different way of experiencing the visual by adding a sound dimension to the sculptures. Inviting introspection through contemplation, this exhibition changes the established codes of the sculptural experience. To accompany this communion, choreographer Anne Thériault and composer Virginie Reid take a performative look at the installation. Entitled Requiem, this living study shows how to enter into symbiosis with the sculptures, time and space. For the duration of the performance, the performers, Anne Thériault and Virginie Reid, unveil and compose a choreography while activating the works in the exhibition. On this occasion, visitors will be able to experience a choreographed activation of the total work. These performances act as a kind of user’s guide to the installation.
– Excerpt from texts by Louis Bouvier
Artist statement
Through art, Louis Bouvier’s research aims to bring about encounters between the old and the new, between artefacts of the past and forms of the present, connecting heritage, tradition and contemporary issues. By multiplying visual layers, he offers an artistic interpretation of the idea of anachronistic montage, establishing within the works themselves a horizontal reading of art history and its canons. Through photorealistic drawing and hybrid sculptures, he transforms classical periodization by deploying a wide range of references in his installations. Working across many media and techniques (stone, 3D printing, casting, wood, plaster, direct carving, watercolour, lead and coloured pencils), he seeks to create new points of contact that can, if given the chance, reconfigure reality so that a new constellation of connections emerges.
About the artist
Louis Bouvier lives and works in Montréal, where he was born. He holds an MFA from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2015). His career has led him to present his work both nationally and internationally: Galerie de l’UQAM (Montréal 2015), Maison des Artistes Francophones (Winnipeg 2015), Centre Clark (Montréal 2017), Galerie Sans Nom (Moncton 2018), Helmut (Leipzig 2019), NARS Foundation (Brooklyn 2022) and L’Attrape-Couleurs (Lyon 2024). He has been supported on several occasions by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Like an archaeologist, his multidisciplinary work leads him to dig through temporal layers; he shapes and composes his works by questioning the historical, fragmentation and the remains he discovers as he explores the matter of the real.
Photo credit: Louis Bouvier
