Laurent Montaron
4 September 2014 - 25 October 2014
Opening Reception 5 September 2014 7pm
Artist talk at 6:30PM, followed by reception at 7:30PM Friday 5 September 2014
The work of Laurent Montaron (b. 1972, lives and works in Paris) is suffused with the contemporary history of the media. For Montaron, a compulsive exploration of technologies and technological experimentation is a means to explore how we think through tools and objects, and find essence in the sense of things. Alchemy, childhood memories, astrology, pre-Socratic Greek philosophies, physical conditions and technological systems are combined, gathering the means of representation, photography, film, installation and sculpture, in considered installations which make evident the paradoxes of representation and thought. The activity of projection is not enclosed in the black box space; this projection is made visible in multiple modes which populate our everyday, Montaron insists “no image can be dissociated from the way it has been made.”
Everything is accidental is the North-American premiere of Montaron’s new film work Nature of the Self (2014), produced during his residency at the French Academy in Rome, presented in a vitrine-like installation and with a new sculptural work.
Laurent Montaron (b. 1972, Verneuil-sur-Avre) is an interdisciplinary artist working across film, photography, installation, sound and performance. He has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally including; You imagine what you desire, 19th Biennale of Sydney, 2014; The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th Venice Biennale, 2013; Open End- Goetz Collection, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Lost in LA, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Art Park, Los Angeles, all 2012. Recent key solo exhibitions include; Prospectif Cinema: Laurent Montaron, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2013; Laurent Montaron, Pigna Project Space, Rome, 2013; Laurent Montaron, galerie schleicher+lange, Berlin 2012; and Pace, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, 2010.
This exhibition is presented in collaboration with TIFF as part of the Future Projections programme and in partnership with the Consulate General of France in Toronto.
Image credit: Laurent Montaron, Nature of the Self (film still), 2014