The New City Gas space is developing its offer by hosting the Canadian premiere of the exhibition Intangible forms, by Japanese artist Shohei Fujimoto. It is an immersive experience presented by Produkt and Artechouse composed of a mixture of digital works and breathtaking ballets of lasers that give body and breathe life into light and technology.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
The effect is striking: at the heart of the building once used to transform coal into an energy source for lighting, 660 red laser beams perform an elegant choreography. The rays start from the ground and rise up to the industrial vault on which they draw moving, almost moving points of light.
The imposing installation, already presented in New York in 2020 and redesigned to inhabit the New City Gas building, is the major attraction and the work that gives its name to the exhibition. Intangible forms, presented until April 22. The seven works of art that compose it seek to evoke the living – both the links between people and nature or even the matter that composes us – through a visual exploration based on mathematics, geometric shapes and, of course, the light.
Fujimoto, trained in science, mathematics and art, invites viewers of his works to “explore the essence of existence, the behavior of living organisms and the phenomena that surround life”. His philosophical reflection finds its incarnation in abstract works, each endowed with its own sound environment.
PHOTO DUO-TANG STUDIOS, PROVIDED BY NEW CITY GAS
Image taken from Density Compressiondigital artwork by Shohei Fujimoto
Five of them are medium-sized projections deployed around the main installations. Two are based on mathematical formulas that take shape before our eyes in the form of moving, often spherical images. Density Compressionfor example, opens with that of an expanding circle, like our universe, and plunges into it until it evokes the infinitely small, crucible of life.
Another series of three works relies on a white beam of light, diverted, deformed or tampered with, often by sets of moving mirrors, evoking the relationship between the past and the future (the missing link being the present) in the case of Power Of One #Surfacethe void (Power Of One #Empty) or perhaps over time (Power Of One #Extrude). Intangible #Umbraa medium-scale installation of red lasers, literally gives light density by synchronizing the dance of light beams to their digital “shadow” projected on a giant screen.
The strange beauty of images
There is nothing really interactive in Intangible forms, even if the visitor can, if he wishes, intervene by passing his hands among the jets of red lasers and observing the transformations that he causes up there on the ceiling. The exhibition envelops us, however, both aurally (rustling, pulsating, textures) and visually, of course. Without necessarily understanding the artist’s approach, we let ourselves be caught up in the sometimes strange beauty of the images he creates and in which we can project our own visions or questions, which refer to the links between people as well as to the material that constitutes.
The masterpiece thus comes to evoke both a forest of swaying trees and those networks of neurons or nerve endings that make us live and feel the world around us. One of the segments of this impressive and thrilling choreography of lasers even refers, if you will, to the blood flow propelled by the valves and muscles of our heart.
Until April 22, at New City Gas