| Artist statement pdf | ||
Isabelle Hayeur | Artist statement My work over the past few years has focused on issues related to landscape design and architecture. I have been investigating the ways in which we invest in, and occupy space.; trying to gain a deeper understanding of the state of the landscapes in order to comprehend our societies' relationships to their environments. Landscape representations are attitudes of awareness; our interpretations of them and their spatial compositions bring us new visions of the world and ourselves. The spaces in which we live show clear evidence of the rapid pace and multiplicity of changes that have occurred over the past century. Our natural, rural and urban environments have undergone dramatic upheavals, particularly in the past 30 or 40 years. The current landscape is a coming together of radically different and often contradictory spaces. For us, this ever-more fragmented territory has become familiar, and we often traverse it without awareness. Indeed, the fragmentation of the landscape closely parallels the compartmentalization of our activities and time. The highly mediatized world in which we live surrounds us with abstract spaces and manufactured environments. Our perceptions are inhabited by aspects of a technical culture that transforms, condenses and re-directs them toward a world that is increasingly constructed and orchestrated. A new space is gradually being engineered; one that is inextricably confounding reality and fiction. We have the privilege of constructing our world: the world we inhabit and the world that inhabits us. This is, of course, not a new phenomenon, but we have unprecedented means for achieving these ends. We give form to worlds that were once impossible and even unthinkable. We act on our surroundings and intervene in the course of events as never before. The universe in which we live has become malleable. It seems clear that our visions and lifestyles have a much greater impact on the world we occupy than in the past. It thus becomes particularly important that we assume responsibility for the landscapes we create and the worlds we imagine. These are the reflections that have informed my work over the past several years. By doctoring my images, I compose vast panoramas that merge different sites into a single space. These landscapes appear to be familiar, but are constructed from many different images. I use the "transparency" of photography and the fact that it appears to be a direct representation of reality to fabricate spaces that are suspended between document and fiction. These possible worlds show us how easy it is for us to now manipulate and play with the world's realities. Isabelle Hayeur | Biography Born in 1969, Isabelle Hayeur, lives and works in Montreal. She completed a BFA in 1996 and a MFA in 2002 at Université du Québec à Montréal. Since the late 1990s, she has been known for her large-format digital montages, while she also produced several videos, site-specific installations and a few net art works. Both appealing and alarming, Isabelle Hayeur work present vast landscapes that denounce the no-man's-lands that modern and contemporary civilizations allow to emerge. Her digital images invite us to observe the "landscape" dimension of the world with a foreign sentiment that places us on the lookout for modern and contemporary industrial developments. Her work questions the impact of western development models on environment and invites us to think about the states of the landscape. The unknown, or unknowable, places she fabricates draw attention to the non-places that surround us. She has exhibited in the context of various group and solo exhibitions. Her video works were screened in numerous international festivals. Most recent exhibitions include Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Canada (2005), The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Canada (2005), The Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada (2005), The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMoca), North-Adams, United States (2004-2005), Casino Luxembourg, forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg (2005), Canada's Cultural Program at Expo 2005, Aichi, Japan (2005) and The Neuer Berliner Kuntsverien, Berlin, Germany (2005) In 2001, she received The Contact Prize for Emerging Photography Artist for her participation at Le Mois de la Photo in Montreal and, in 2004, the OFQJ-Champ Libre prize, for her site-specific video installation in an abandoned waste incinerator presented at the 6e Manifestation Internationale Vidéo et Art Électronique de Montréal.
|
|
|