The Unknown Artist Publication

Editors: Anne Bertrand, Bernard Schütze
Essay: Bernard Schütze
Abstracts: Bernard Schütze, François Deck
Introduction: Anne Bertrand
Testimonial: Patrice Loubier
Photos: Guy L’Heureux
Design: Kevin Yuen Kit Lo

The publication collects materials produced during The Unknown Artist programming presented from January to June 2011, in addition to an essay by curator and author Bernard Schütze, and an illustrated transcription of artist Sophie Castonguay’s interventions.

The Unknown Artist proposes a reflection on the figure of the artist as conceived and announced by Schütze: “It was about imagining another sort of figure for the artist; a figure not bound by the imperative of signatory authority and the recognition dividends of the critical or economic variety; a figure that reveals the workings of a distributed artistic agency, which diffuses and decenters authorship.” As the corpus of the Unknown Artist revealed itself progressively over the course of the programming, we discover, upon its materialized outcome in the form of this publication, a figure that is both exploded and whole, productive in the absence of clear objectives, and always surprising as it eludes our expectations. We discover an artist who is temporarily rid of the impetus to seek notoriety, and dedicated to the examination of an unknown figure: its agency, its undetermined creative processes, as well as its status.

The editors wish to thank the following participants in the constitution of The Unknown Artist: Faiz Abhuani, Fortner Anderson, Gentiane Bélanger, Alexis Bellavance, Christian Bujold, Nicole Burisch, Sophie Castonguay, François Deck, Geneviève Dulude-Decelles, David Gagnon, Dominic Gagnon, Gabrielle Giasson-Dulude, Thomas Grondin, Patric Lacasse, Michelle Lacombe, Chantale Laplante, François Lemieux, Sophie Le Phat Ho, Mathieu Marcoux, Alex Megelas, Catherine Melançon, Marc-Antoine Phaneuf, Catherine Plaisance, Chloé Poirier-Sauvé, Nathalie Quagliotto, Felicity Tayler, Patrick Ward, Sarah Wendt, Dustin Wilson.