4 April 2024

14:20 – 15:05

Amphi 1

Laurent Lamarche

Laurent Lamarche holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts (2012) from the Université du Québec à Montréal, and works in sculpture, photography, installation and multimedia. His work has been presented in group and solo exhibitions in Quebec and abroad. They are part of numerous private and public collections, including those of the Musée national des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Cirque du Soleil, Loto-Québec, Tourisme Montréal and UC Berkeley. Laurent Lamarche has created more than a dozen works of public art in Quebec, as part of the Politique d’intégration de l’art à l’architecture. The artist is represented by Art Mûr Gallery.

Fossilization and bioluminescence: what artistic strategy brings them together?

My interest in living organisms and the future of humanity leads me to recreate observable physical phenomena by immobilizing them in a frozen temporality that contains the traces of a movement, an action requiring the intervention of a certain energy. Pairing what might look like plants with light inevitably echoes bioluminescence. In the Fossil series, I sculpt Plexiglas in its haptic depth, leaving an intriguing trace: are we looking at an imprint left by an as yet unknown organism on a surface of ice, or rather at the proliferation of a futuristic plant specimen equipped with indefinable technology? The intrigue is further revealed by the light, which suggests bioluminescent activity. Between reality and fiction, between nature and artifice, light gives off a vibrant energy, if not a living one.