Open Studio, Toronto

September 10, 2021 – October 23, 2021

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For the last ten years, Philippe Blanchard has developed an interdisciplinary creative practice exploring the intersections of animation, installation, textile and print. His recent animated works, Brouillages/Interference Patterns and Rayuela/Hopscotch, both from 2019, represent the continuation of a body of work first initiated during his yearlong research project through Open Studio’s Nick Novak Fellowship, in 2016.

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These two works explore how tensions inherent to reproduced or moving images make and shape our perception of time and space, and complicate one’s place within the world. In these films, screen-prints or CNC-milled wooden objects are cast as actors in stop-motion choreographies shot on location in Toronto and Buenos Aires environments. The short animated scenes are sometimes improvised or accidental, sometimes planned and repeating, as patterns in time and space. These tensions are mirrored and layered within the objects themselves (as multiples) but also within the dual-channel presentation or through the structuring of the works as short sketches with recurring movements. Through these two recent animated works, Philippe Blanchard invites us to think about repetition, chance and change as frameworks to negotiate the tensions between the analog world we exist in and the digital media that structures how we perceive it.

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The artist would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for supporting these two projects.

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