For over ten years, the Foundation has welcomed artists in residence who wish to develop projects motivated by a sense of history and an interest in fostering a dialogue with Guido Molinari’s work. Through these residencies, the Foundation seeks to contribute to current aesthetic and theoretical debates, revisit art historical works from a contemporary perspective, and promote the practice of contemporary Quebec artists in a way that reflects issues raised by Molinari’s work. This year, the Foundation is delighted to welcome artists Jean-Maxime Dufresne and Virginie Laganière. An exhibition showcasing the results of her residency will be presented from March 13 to May 25, 2024.
Biography
In addition to their individual practices, Jean-Maxime Dufresne and Virginie Laganière have been collaborating as a duo for some twenty years. Anthropological in nature, their artistic research focuses on the transformations of our built, natural and technological territories, with a particular sensitivity to the human psyche. At the confluence of documentary, fictional and speculative approaches, their work with image and sound aims to interrogate various realities to reveal minor narratives. Their approach is primarily guided by field research, conceptual thinking and investigative processes deployed during residencies, which include collaboration with stakeholders from multiple horizons. Through the telescoping of diverse phenomena, their artistic production translates into protean installations that create a fertile dialogue in the arrangement of research material. In order to explore their experiential and critical scope, a reflection on the staging of the photographic and videographic image runs through all their exhibitions, integrating sound art, sculptural elements and architectural devices.
Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and CALQ, their work has been presented in exhibitions, festivals and residencies in Quebec and abroad, including Musée d’art de Joliette, Galerie de l’UQAM, Occurrence center for art and experimentation, Foreman Art Gallery, Fonderie Darling, Optica, VU, center de diffusion et de production de la photographie, as well as Tokyo Arts and Space, ISELP – arts contemporains (Bruxelles), La Becque (La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland), Studio du Québec à Rome, Helsinki International Artist Programme (HIAP), Titanik Gallery (Turku, Finland), Homesession (Barcelona) and Inside-Out Art Museum (Beijing). Their video work has recently been shown at the Festival International du Film sur l’Art, the Rencontres internationales Paris / Berlin, the Grantham Foundation and Palazzo Grassi in Venice. It is part of the Hydro-Québec Collection and will shortly be distributed by Vidéographe. In 2025, they will take up a residency at the Ferme-Asile art center (Sion, Switzerland).
Research project
Chromatopia
Drawing on a key period in Guido Molinari’s artistic production that favors abstraction and chromatic vibration, Chromatopia unfolds an investigation into the polysemy of color. For this new research, founded on the conviction that knowledge emerges from contact with plural realities, the exploration of Molinari’s work and archives will act as an incubator to create a laboratory of ideas on chromatic perception. Faced with the ambivalence of colors and the difficulty of assigning them a precise meaning, we wish to examine their psychological, cultural, social, biological, neurological, sensory or political dimensions, through the prism of artistic creation and disciplinary transversality. In a processual approach, the residency period will bring together conceptual thinking, documentary experimentation, scientific contributions and speculative imaginations. By bringing together installation, photography, video and sound, attention will be paid to visibility and chromatic dissonance within our material culture and our urban, natural and technological environments.
