La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario will be launching its new artistic season with the opening of Nouveaux Troglodytes on Aug. 11.
The vibrant, flashing installation is the work of Toronto artist Philippe Blanchard.
The exhibition will transform the gallery into a modern-day cavern, complete with illuminated stalactites and stalagmites covered in patterns animated by strobe lights and alternating red, green, and blue lamps. Blanchard’s work seeks to restore animation’s fundamentally marvellous and magical nature.
Like the troglodytes of the past, he invites us to witness the wondrous quality of lights in motion, recalling ancient fires in prehistoric caverns.
The opening for this psychedelic exhibition will be held in collaboration with the Up Here emerging music and public art festival. The GNO is proud to work with Up Here and to be part of a festival that so greatly contributes to Downtown Sudbury’s dynamic arts and culture scene.
Blanchard is a Toronto-based artist, animator, teacher and curator. His diverse creative background (film production, digital visual effects, studio arts) has informed an interdisciplinary practice combining animation, installation, light shows, drawing, painting and printmaking.
His recent projects include expanded animation installations for Chromatic Festival/C2MTL, the Power Plant and solo shows at Arprim (Montreal) and InterAccess (Toronto), all featuring screen-printed imagery animated by coloured light.
His animation work has been shown at Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (Montreal), Pop Montreal Festival, Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), The Kitchen (New York), RISD (Providence RI), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington DC), National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington DC), LACMA (Los Angeles), San Francisco Art Institute, Cal Arts (Valencia, CA), Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Impakt Festival (Utrecht NL), Center for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow), the Ottawa Art Gallery, InterAccess, Angell Gallery and AGYU.
The opening reception takes place from 5-7 p.m. Aug. 11 at the GNO. The exhibition stays at GNO until Sept. 24.
