The Perfect Retention

2017-2018

Inkjet print on Hahnemühle matte paper, 27.5 x 41.25 in. (framed), edition of 3

An auto-photograph produced in dialogue with the work The Perfect Death of James Lee Byars (1994), this project addresses notions of ethics, the ontology of the work and its visibility by questioning the very medium of photography.

Before the image was made, the action consisted of thinking about what I am until I arrived at what I then considered to be closest to what I am. My psychological state had then drastically shifted towards one in which I was quietly dissipating: I was no longer making an image. In other words, I no longer represented myself through a set of characteristics. I pressed the shutter release at a time when almost everything about me had disappeared from my thoughts, apart from the attempt to think about who I am. The notion of death present in Byars' work had now reversed into that of existence.

At the limit of perceptibility, the plastic and aesthetic quality of the surface generates an absorbing effect that is immediately repelled by the form (me) that subtly appears. In this way, the notion of presence oscillates with that of absence in a way similar to the flickering of the camera. What are we looking at if the photographed struggles to stand out in the image? By revealing only certain features that allow us to see the form of the photographed, the image suggests the preservation of being as it is, rather than a representation. It's an exercise in thinking about a form of life whose value is established not by the subject's distinction and visibility, but in its capacity to be as it is, in potential.

La proposition / The Proposal

Exhibition by David Tomas at Galerie de l'UQO, Gatineau, Québec (CA)
September 19 - October 27, 2018

Curated by David Tomas and featuring works by Keith Arnatt, Robert Barry, James Lee Byars, Manoushka Larouche, John Latham, David Tomas, Bernar Venet.

The production economy of the exhibition begins with the artist and ends with the viewer. The circulation of the work of art within this economy traces the path from producer to consumer. As in the case of the spectator and the exhibition, the path from production to consumption is negotiated via other cultural actors, protagonists and major economic forces (teachers, university professors, curators, critics and museum directors and administrators). Major economic forces include major economic players (collectors, auction houses and others), national and local governments and cultural industries in general. The actions of these protagonists and the deployment of these forces are systematically modulated by pervasive, often insidious social ambitions, or by short- or long-term financial objectives. If the fundamental binary structure on which art and the art exhibition rest is that of the artist and the viewer, it can therefore be argued that it is in the movement of a work of art between these two indispensable actors that another essential, less perceptible relationship is revealed. The relationship between the work of art and its presentation context, the exhibition, is based on an important document: the exhibition proposal. This document serves as a passport enabling artworks to travel from the realm of creation to the space of consumption, from private to public space: from the studio (or, increasingly, the computer) to a physical exhibition space. The exhibition proposal, most often printed, can also simply take the form of a verbal agreement comparable to a symbolic handshake. The exhibition serves as the basis for a formal contract which, once signed, binds the artist and the representative of the exhibition space - an agreement based on a common goal: the production of an exhibition of works described in a proposal. Frequently, however, the content of the proposal may change, works may be added or substituted, conceptual frameworks may be modified. What is proposed may never be presented, because it will have been replaced by a proposal more extensive than the original, or, more rarely, by a variant of the initial proposal, or by a new proposal.