Jocelyn Robert is an interdisciplinary artist active in music, sound art, programming, performance, installation, video and writing.

In the first part of Conjonctures, Robert presents a series of visual works made up of print pieces and videos exploring the collective imagination as it is constructed and expressed through digital networks.

In the second part of the exhibition, a new work focuses on signal degradation and that elusive phenomenon we call “family resemblance”. The project consists of a series of images and a sound piece using the vibrating strings of an upright piano sans pianist. Digitally recorded and processed, these vibrations are partially retransmitted via speakers installed around the space. The signals change all along their course of transmission, highlighting the transformative nature of the processes by which all types of communication operate.

In sum, Conjonctures foregrounds signal variation from transmission to reception, be it in visual or sonic forms. Here, Jocelyn Robert goes above and beyond the mere display of technical and digital works; indeed, he offers us a metaphor for the digitized society in which we live.

Guided tour and vernissage: Saturday, September 14 at 2 pm.

Jocelyn Robert, video of the exhibition Conjonctures presented at EXPRESSION, 1 min 35 s. ©NousTV

In the 1990s, Jocelyn Philibert was known for his sculptures and installations. However, since the early 2000s, his practice has been focused primarily on photography. Indeed, he now creates sophisticated large-scale photomontages made from hundreds of flash photos—photos taken at night and assembled during the day, the light of the sun now replacing its artificial counterpart.

With Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell’s work, we, as viewers, are impelled to revisit whole swathes of art history, and to reconsider styles, genres and techniques we would normally think of as incompatible. In her syncretic approach, she brings together a wide range of influences and methods: the baroque, 17^th-century Dutch still life painting, the chiaroscuro, contour drawing, etching, Japanese and Western film aesthetics, screenprinting, ceramics, sculpture, and other, more recent elements as well, such as surrealism and botany. Audaciously time-travelling, voluntarily conjuring up anachronisms and provoking impossible encounters between incongruous objects, Dinan-Mitchell constantly throws us off the scent.

Dinan-Mitchell fully owns the decorative nature of her installations, inverting the hierarchy of low and high art. Indeed, she designs intimate and familiar mise-en-scènes where strangeness, freedom, seduction and humour can truly coexist.

Étrange familiarité is an ornamentally-oriented installation that takes botany as its central theme, featuring, among other things, depictions of flowers sprouted in Dinan-Mitchell’s own imagination. This work reminds us that exhibited objects are only of secondary importance; it is first and foremost the artist’s mind, her penchants, personality and sense of freedom that take centre stage here. Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell’s fantastical world imbues us with joie de vivre, despite—or perhaps because—of the consciousness of death that her eclectic still lifes evoke.

Guided tour and vernissage: Saturday, February 8 at 2 pm.

Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell, video of the exhibition Étrange familiarité presented at EXPRESSION, 2 min. © NousTV

Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell, virtual tour of the exhibition Étrange familiarité presented at EXPRESSION, 3 min 4 s. © NousTV

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