MAGDALENA MOLINARI

OPEN STUDIO / MEETING THE ARTIST

Friday, Febuary 23th, from 5 to 7 PM

Artists and studio-residencies exchanges between Quebec and Argentina

Considering the importance for the Quebec government of developing lasting cultural ties with Argentina, the Quebec Arts and Letters Council (CALQ) has entered into a partnership agreement with the Government of Argentina to carry out an exchange of residencies for creation and resourcing in visual arts and digital arts. These residencies are aimed at fostering lasting ties and confronting points of view between Quebec and Argentina artists, thus contributing to the development of their artistic statement.

INTENSITIES SEEKING EXPRESSION

“A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects, it takes away ourcertainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.” Gerard Richter.

After a few weeks of residence the artist became interested in snow, its changing shapes, texture and its whiteness as the carrier of every color. The snow creates a topography that covers everything, merging everything together in an infinite white mass that contains and connects, layer after layer, objects, nature, infrastructures, making a continuous surface between the earth and the sky, appearing like a giant white blanket. To this natural phenomenon the human intervention is added: to clear roads, mountains are created everywhere. The sounds cushioned by the snow contribute to a feeling of somnolent immersion. With this in mind, a series of works were developed.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT /

The project consists of a series of light installations, using LED devices and digital control applications that occupies space, in different ways and different scales, with colors, shapes and movements. The final images are created from an interface that translates footage captured through a video camera to a matrix of light-emitting spots that acquires different configurations according to the space to be occupied.

THE UNRECOGNIZABLE

This installation consists of two exercises of abstraction that collapses in a mass of images and shapes. One is the translation of footage of a body moving, to a matrix of lights. The other is the translation of the brightness of a digital image of snow texture into a topography composed of five gradient heights. The meshing materials are a translucent plastic fabric and salt. The salt grains were separated through a mechanic system to obtain four different “resolutions” of salt. The result is an ever-changing topography of light and color that configures something visually familiar and strange at the same time.

THE DIFFUSE

This installation is composed of light boxes working with the relationship between image, matter and light, attempting to dissolve the projection of meaning in image in the threshold between figuration and abstraction, between digital and analog. The perfect geometry of the square collapses with imperfect shape of snow and salt. What is this strange feeling that this combination provoke to the spirit? The square, abstract, measurable, concrete with very precise limits; snow, ever changing ephemeral and difficult to measure; even though salt has an average shape and size, every grain is different. Light is present in every piece, sewing all together. The material condition of light exists only in the interaction with other materials. It seems to emit actual particles that merge with other matter in different ways transforming them. How can we grasp this matter? How to hold, expand, mix and shape light?

THREE AXES SPACE

This device uses space geometry to create a canvas to display the translation of video to a 3D shape. The way it occupies space is determined by its limits (tree plans in X, Y, Z) and the dimensions of the plastic material used as a screen. The rules of digital space collapsing with the analog world.

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Photo credit: Tanya St-Pierre