When Thomas Kneubühler grew up in Switzerland, the rugged mountains of the Alps where for him a place of wilderness and untouched nature. Imagine his surprise when he moved to Quebec and first drove past Mont Bromont one wintry evening, with its ski hills lit up like a Christmas tree. Says Kneubühler: “It looked to me like a surreal landscape, almost like an installation or a land-art project.”  This experience was the genesis of the artist’s Electric Mountains project. On show now at Galerie Projex-Mtl are a series of Kneubühler large scale photographs, as well as a sound piece by Steve Bates to accompany Kneubühler’s video, and a light installation by Geoffrey Jones which corresponds to the largest photo of the exhibition.
The “Electric Mountains” series is a study of light and energy. The intensely glowing ski resorts of Kneubühler’s images both add and eliminate light. The 500 00 watts of electric illumination spew so much light into the night sky that all the stars are washed out, replaced by the strings of floodlights trailing down the ski slopes. A haze of ephemeral light even tinges the clouds far into the horizon, there is no black night. Even in the deepest shadows the snow sparkles like fairly dust.
Bates’ sound track of humming electricity underscores the artificiality of the light source, while Jones’ vibrant electric light installation slowly changes colour and intensity – an attempt to mimic the fading in and out of sun light, but still decidedly electric.

Galerie Projex-Mtl
space 212
Thomas Kneubühler
Electric Mountains
exhibition period: April 30 – June 20, 2009
www.projex-mtl.com