Artist Holo Memories, 2018
Holographic sculpture with 30 x 40 cm glass hologram palette in steel structure 100 x 55 x 30 cm
Edition of 4
Within the steel outline of a briefcase a holographic image of a digital neuronal structure is overlaid on a painter’s palette of pure color to suggest a relational structure between creation, perception and commodification.
'I composed this sculptural and light piece by associations of a neuronal network, transparent colors and painter's accessories, as to suggest a cartographic paradigm of my practice where the brain is the territory and the viewer’s eye the map'
Contemporary neurosciences provide detailed imagery of how our brain and memory function. Yet from these images is difficult to map and represent what is cognition or how we create meaning.
Boissonnet often combines the entrenched meaning of maps and globes with symbolic imagery of tools and actions to create systems of meaning in his installations. The painter’s palette is a recurring accessory that he uses to suggest the artistic practice of image creation.
This is his first artwork using imagery of the brain. The digital tensor imagery is a recording of neuronal connections which the artist relates to Marcel Duchamp and the idea that the brain of the viewer at the end establishes the meaning and the work as ‘art’.
HOLOGRAPHIC TECHNICAL SUPPORT: Atelier Holographique de Paris / with special thanks to Pascal GauchetDIGITAL IMAGERY SUPPORT: Lausanne EPF & University of Geneva/ with special thanks to Vanessa Siffredi and Silvia Obertino
Philippe Boissonnet, Artist Holo Memories
Philippe Boissonnet creates installations of artworks that encompass several forms of artistic expression: drawing, photography, sculpture, holography, video and digital imagery. A selection of these installations with holograms were brought together for his exhibition ‘Uncertain Worlds’ (2014) at the HoloCenter – Long Island City Clock Tower Gallery, New York. In 2017 he participated in ‘The Transparent Travel’ a performance of artists with their artwork in plexiglass rolling suitcases in public spaces around Venice and Manhattan, curated by The Two Gullivers.
Boissonnet’s artwork has been exhibited in a number of group and solo exhibitions in Canada, United States, Colombia, Mexico, Colombia, Australia, Japan, and Europe. In 1983 he received the Elisabeth Greenshields Foundation award for his works combining drawing and photocopier images and a Shearwater Foundation award for his holographic art in 1998.
Philippe Boissonnet was born in France where he studied visual arts in Angers (Fine Arts School) and Paris (University La Sorbonne). He migrated to Montreal in 1985 where he completed his PhD in arts at UQAM (2013). Since 1993, he has been a professor of visual and media arts at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. Boissonnet has been part of several artist‐in‐residency programs such as The Fringe Research Holographics Lab (Toronto, 1984–1985), the Dirección Nacional del Antártico (Argentina, 2007) and the HoloCenter Pulse Laser Holography Studio at Ohio State University (USA, 2012).