Jean-Maxime Dufresne: Agency

February 20 – March 21, 2009
Opening on Friday February 20, 5pm-9pm

Project Description

Centre des arts actuels Skol presents Agency a solo exhibition by Montreal artist Jean-Maxime Dufresne. In his investigation of urban and social realities, Jean-Maxime Dufresne brings the gallery space to life with an arrangement of modules conducive to encounter between people and ideas – such as a viewing station, a shared kitchen, a transcript office or a listening area. Saturday March 21^st, starting at 3pm, join the artist and other guests for a convivial kitchen talk surrounding the issues and topics raised by Agency. The public is also invited to drop in and make use of the kitchen during lunch hours and work breaks.

Using research, editing and installation processes, Agency derives its content from thought-provoking video interviews broaching various concerns: revisited utopias, interstitial practices, precarious spaces, hidden phenomena, migrating bodies, technological uses, etc. Urban, social or micropolitical space become contested, porous and reinvented matter as loose lines of correspondence and conflict are traced between different issues. This exhibition is accompanied by a text by Fabien Loszach, who casts Dufresne’s investigation as a sociological questioning of “what arrangements can best help human beings live together and strengthen social connections?” This on-going work has been realized through the generous and key participation of the following interviewees: Gina Badger, Matthew Biederman, Claude Boullevraye de Passillé, Constanza Camelo Suarez, Isabelle Marie Cyr, Adriana de Oliveira, Dominic Gagnon, Toby Heys, Marcio Lana-Lopez, Sophie Le-Phat Ho, Luc Lévesque, Fabien Loszach, Frank Nobert, Jean-François Prost and Chih-Chien Wang.