Flickering Matter

Nuit Blanche Open Studio shop window installation on display from sunset to sunrise, Saturday, October 1, 2022 (7:00 pm – 7:00 am).

---

Thinking through Soviet filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein’s reflections on animation as a plasmatic medium, one that is forever unstable and with the “ability to dynamically assume any form“, while also considering the utopian, immersive, Expanded Cinema experiments of the 1960s (Stan Vanderbeek, in particular), Philippe Blanchard’s light installations, Flickering Matter, play with interference between the chromatic properties of pigment (printed ink, dyed yarn) and wavelengths of coloured light to produce immersive, expanded animations. Through this work, what is material seems unstable, a pulsating and shimmering reflection of itself, whereby light becomes matter and matter becomes animated.

Image (detail): Shop Window installation, Philippe Blanchard, Flickering Matter, (first created in 2019), modular screenprints on wood, knit and tufted cotton.

—

Philippe Blanchard is a Toronto-based artist, animator and educator. His diverse creative background has informed an interdisciplinary practice combining animation, installation, light shows, textile and printmaking. His studio research explores and disrupts how moving images– with their underlying histories and inherited disciplinary boundaries–inform cultural notions of time and space.

Recent projects include textile production research at TextielLab (Textile Museum, Tilburg NL), a solo exhibition of experimental stop-motion animations at Atelier Circulaire (Montreal), a studio residency and an exhibition at Proyecto ‘Ace (Buenos Aires), and a solo exhibition at Open Studio (Toronto).

Please note that this is a window installation and the studio and galleries will be closed during the event. The installation will be visible to the public through Open Studio’s Shop window.