At the heart of this second cycle of our Frontière programmation, “Remix and Networks: Challenging Boundaries,” TOPO is hosting the installation from November 11 to December 19, 2020. Paysages de l’Anthropocène, by artist Oli Sorenson.
With this project, Sorenson embarks on a new body of work that borrows the neo-geo visual language of American artist Peter Halley to initiate a reflection on human activities that have a real ecological impact and generate multiple emergencies for our planet.
Adopting an aesthetic that oscillates between Peter Halley's early paintings, Instagram's square frames, Minecraft landscapes, Deleuze's imagination, and the ecological issues of the Anthropocene movement, Sorenson takes over the TOPO window display with an LED screen showing a multitude of abstract and figurative scenes illustrating the ubiquity of the networks that articulate and control our social relationships on a daily basis.
The artist attempts to represent these matrices that fuel the global economy, where land and sea routes are intertwined with fiber optics and oil pipelines, electrical cables and sewers, while the atmosphere is saturated with WiFi and Bluetooth waves, not to mention carbon pollutants and pesticides. These conduits and many others contribute to an acceleration of consumption flows at the heart of contemporary societies, particularly through the rapid obsolescence of technological instruments, which increases the accumulation of waste tenfold in the age of information networks.
As a whole, Paysages de l’Anthropocène includes a collection of geometric images on various media, including drawing, painting, as well as video and social media platforms Instagram, Vimeo, and Giphy.
The LED screens used by the artist come from Creative Lab, a Laval-based company specializing in the design of immersive video environments. A workshop is planned for spring 2021 with its director, Francis Aubin, a creator who has developed a customized range of event technologies for large-scale audiovisual installations.
