Symposium Committee: Éric Bujold, Danièle Patenaude, John Zeppetelli, Julie Couture, Pascal de Guise, Josée Bélisle and François Dufresne
In the spirit of a museum’s art acquisition committee, the ninth Collectors Symposium, generously sponsored by National Bank Private Wealth 1859, was held on Tuesday, November 3, in the galleries devoted to the exhibition L’OEil et l’Esprit.
Co-chaired by Julie Couture and Pascal de Guise, this fundraising event for the Musée Foundation brought together seventy guests who were invited to take part in selecting the next work that will enrich the Musée Collection.
Curators Lesley Johnstone and Mark Lanctôt, and head of multimedia Louise Simard, presented works by Patrick Bernatchez (Lost in Time, 2014, colour film transferred to digital support, 46 min, sound), Jon Rafman (New Age Demanded; Rivers North of the Future, 2014, inkjet print) and Jessica Eaton (cfaal 314 and cfaal 352, 2013, inkjet print).
Following their deliberations, our guests selected Eaton’s two photographic works.
Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1977, Jessica Eaton studied at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver (BFA in Photography, 2006). Her work poses existential questions about photography, its processes and the transition from traditional analogue technique to digital technology.
She literally fabricates her images using an analogue camera and a tripartite additive colour process she came across in an old Kodak manual. The title of her cfaal series clearly announces the references to Bauhaus artist Josef Albers and American artist Sol LeWitt—“Cube for Albers and LeWitt”—and her fondness for a concise, geometric formal vocabulary: cube, square, bands of colour, prism. She constructs cubes of different dimensions and paints them black, white and various shades of grey. She then photographs them several times on the same negative, placing a different colour-separation filter—green, red, blue—over the lens each time. This allows her to create vibrant compositions that start out from an absence of colour. Fully absorbed by the potential of the photographic process, she shows us iconic, abstract images that have nothing to do with reality but are primarily the product.
