Patrice Loubier: Furtive Practice – Fragments of an enquiry

Research Residency

January 13 – February 25, 2012
Opening on Friday January 13, 5pm-9pm
Round Table on Saturday February 18, 2pm-5:30pm with Patrice Loubier, Annie Gérin, Steve Giasson, Luc Lévesque, Louise Paillé, Suzanne Paquet & karen elaine spencer
Patrice Loubier will be present in the gallery to meet with the public on the following Saturdays : January 28, February 4, 11 and 18 from 12pm-5pm
Skol will be open for the Nuit Blanche à Montréal on Saturday February 25 from 8pm to 3am

Project Description

For two months, Skol will be transformed into Patrice Loubier’s research quarters. In a space that will be part lounge, part office, part conference room, and part studio, he’ll pursue an investigation into so-called furtive practices—the objects, signs, or gestures that somewhat secretly and anonymously ambush their audiences in various public spaces. Indeed, he’ll be sketching a topology of such events, reflecting on the paradoxical balance their instigators establish between secrecy and dissemination, marking out their field of action, and observing their side-effects. He’ll be examining the meaning and the political resonances of the infiltration procedures one now finds in street art, in site-specific dance, and in such new forms of exchange and activism as bookcrossing (where readers leave books in public spaces, like bottles in the sea, for other potential readers) or shopdropping (hijacked items surreptitiously put back on store shelves).

All are elements of an enquiry not meant to solve enigmas so much as rekindle the intensity of the questions these works force upon us. While Skol’s exhibition space will be temporarily transformed into a workshop, the researcher thus set up will also take advantage of the context of the art centre residency to give his work a more public and performative dimension. Conversations, encounters, and other activities will also take place among the traces of the research work in this evolving space.

Keys

1. Patrice Loubier, « Par hasard et en passant. Sur quelques œuvres rencontrées en marchant », Esse n° 55, Dérives II, automne 2005, p. 26-31.
2. Kym Pruesse (dir.), Accidental Audience. Urban Interventions by Artists, Toronto, off/site@toronto, 1999.
3. Space Invaders’ website