The concept of light and shade is integral to visual art. It is the essential ingredient in Chiaroscuro, the basis of photography and film, and Caravaggio would loose all sense of drama without it. The current exhibition at Les Territoires titled En Obscurité explores the notions of light and shade by tipping the balance in favour of darkness.

Step through the heavy black curtain at the entrance of the gallery, and your are plunged into semi-darkness. There still is enough light to move about and clearly see all six artworks on display, but the light level is at a minimum, intermittently set by the artists themselves. Now you are seeing art with “new eyes”.

Matthieu Beauséjour‘s piece spells the words “hello darkness, my old friend” in neon lights. I assume it is a nod to the Simon and Garfunkel piece “Sound of Silence” with its line “my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light.” His work provides the ambient light for Jean-François Lauda‘s painting MIDI #4. The colours of fluid parallel lines travelling across the canvas are barely perceptible as the cone receptors in my retina fail on me and colour turns to grey. The exhibition also aims to “challenge the hierarchy of the senses,” where visual input dominates as our main source of information. Tune out vision, and we become more sensitive to other forms of perception. You may pay more attention to Lauda’s audio track, or explore the sense of touch with Karen Task’s piece Paysage nocturne, a softly undulating cone of fur splashed with a spray of sparkling optical fibre lights. I have to fight the urge to let myself drop into the inviting softness of the sculpture.

It seems counterintuitive to create an art show with darkness as an active ingredient, but curator Aseman Sabet – who specializes in “occularcentrism” – presents us with an enigmatic exhibition that challenges our way of “seeing” art .
En Obscurité is more than an art show but was conceived to be an experimental lab. As part of this project the public is invited to a round table discussion with the artists on Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 3:00 p.m.

Les Territoires, space 527
En Obscurité
artists: Mathieu Beauséjour, Mathieu Latulippe, Jean-François Lauda,
Emmanuelle Léonard, Karen Trask
guest curator: Aseman Sabet
November 11 – December 17, 2011
www.lesterritoires.org