Known for his RGB light installations, artist Philippe Blanchard plays with the interaction of coloured light and coloured pigment in his “expanded animation” for in/Future: New Troglodytes II. Borrowing from the forms of naturally-made caves (such as stalactites and stalagmites), Blanchard’s RGB cave environment uses soft and stretched textile forms to craft a cave brimming with visual stimuli in a space formerly home to an amusement park ride. Interested in fire as a prehistoric form of visual technology, Blanchard plays with the magic of light and shadow, and their potential for creating the illusion of moving images. Though informed heavily by the digital, New Troglodytes II reflects on the ancient power of visual storytelling, embodying the simultaneous presence of past and future.
Biography:
Philippe Blanchard is a Toronto-based artist, animator and teacher. 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. Upcoming projects include expanded animation installations at Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario (Sudbury), Open Studio, TAIS and in/future at Ontario Place (Toronto). He has recently exhibited at Festival Chromatic (Paris); Centro de Artes de Guanajuato, San Pedro Museo de Arte in Puebla, the National Museum of Print in Mexico City (Mexico); Glendon Gallery (Toronto), Cambridge Galleries (Cambridge ON), Wayhome Festival (Oro-Medonte ON) and ARPRIM (Montreal), all work featuring screen-printed imagery animated by computer-controlled coloured lighting. Philippe Blanchard’s single-channel 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 Power Plant, the Ottawa Art Gallery, InterAccess, Angell Gallery and AGYU. Philippe Blanchard is currently Chair of Media & Installation Art and Associate Professor at OCAD University in Toronto.