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The Tested
Les Éprouvés
Francine Gagnon

February 25 -March 25, 2006.

A photographic installation
Curated by Sylvie Lacerte





"...Opening up to reality, managing our emotions while letting them run their course, eventually provides the necessary distance for deep-seated metamorphasis. Facinated by the social ideology of perfection and happiness, I consider it important to show that a simple change in point of view has the power to bring about transformation. The eye we cast on our experience defines the level of awareness with which we choose to live."
Francine Gagnon

"A suspended artwork
Test tubes in laboratories are generally held upright, suspended from their holders, the same way the artist's test tubes are suspended in the gallery from a thin steel wire, like the one used by a tightrope walker balancing between the sky and the ground, between life and death. These glass cylinders offer the visitor the zeitgeist of the individuals whose sliced portraits are held captive within the tubular containers. The shots, the photographic proofs of these faces of real, flesh and blood figures nonetheless float in an in-between world. And the test tube, the subject/support of the photographs, recreates for us the atmosphere of the world of biomedical experiments, which the artist knows all too well. The suspended test tube becomes a metaphor for the artist's life.

A kinetic, interactive work
The Tested here are far from static, precisely because of their suspended state: suspended in space and time. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari said of cinema that it was image and movement combined. We could describe Francine Gagnon's suspended pieces as images and movement combined, to paraphrase the two philosophers, since our own movements give us the impression that the images are in motion. The test tubes consequently seem to undulate, like clothes flapping on a line in the wind. Then, these portions of faces come to life before our eyes, as a result of our perambulations, and merge into one. In this way, the visitor pulls these wedged-in figures out of their lethargy and the no-man's-land in which they were held, giving the viewer a sense of brushing against them unexpectedly, in space and time, like an emotion kindled by a furtive caress."
Sylvie Lacerte, Ph.D.

http://www.francinegagnon.com 		Bio
Sylvie Lacerte, Ph.D, has been working since August 2005 at the Daniel Langlois Foundation as Coordinator of the DOCAM research alliance (Documentation and Conservation of Media Art Heritage). She has worked in the arts and culture sector for 25 years. She holds a Ph.D. in art studies and practices from Université du Québec à Montréal (2004). Her thesis, which is on mediation in contemporary art, will be published in 2006. She has received grants from the SSHRC and FQRSC. In 1987, she completed a Master's degree in museum studies at New York University and during these studies completed internships at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the Dance Theater Workshop and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

In 2001-2002, during her doctoral studies, Sylvie Lacerte conducted a major research study at the Daniel Langlois Foundation. The study, supported by UQAM's Groupe de recherche en arts médiatiques (GRAM) and Leonardo, focused on Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT). The results of her research are available on the Observatoire Leonardo des arts et des technosciences (OLATS) Web site. In October 2003, she spoke on the EAT work and the artist-engineer relationship at Créations numériques: nouvelles écritures scéniques, held at Centre Pompidou in Paris. More recently, she worked as an accredited researcher at the DLF, preparing a communications piece on the place of EAT in the history of recent art, which was presented at Refresh! - first international conference on the histories of media art, science, and technology, held at the Banff Center from September 28 to October 1, 2005. Ms. Lacerte has collaborated with many research groups, including the Groupe de recherche en sociologie de l'oeuvre (GRESO) and the Frieda Ackerman Working Group. Ms. Lacerte participates in many symposiums, seminars and conferences as a speaker and moderator. She has published articles on her areas of specialty, including mediation in contemporary art, the future of the museum, and the varied work processes of artists for Spirale magazine, the review Espace Sculpture, and soon for Cahiers du CƒLAT. She also collaborates as an author on exhibition catalogues and produces exhibitions both as an independent curator and artist. She wrote an essay in the anthology Les vingt ans du CIAC (2004) and is responsible for courses in the art history department at UQËM in Montreal. She is also a founding member of Culture Montréal.

Photo based artist Francine Gagnon has exhibited in ten solo shows and over 25 group exhibits mostly in Canada, Mexico, the United States and the Internet. Her photographic work focusing on mysterious images of the body, nature and society has been published, reviewed and written some 20 times. Equally versed in French and English, Gagnon has under her belt a dozen radio and television interviews, as well as many public speaking presentations.

Following the unveiling of her suspended photographic objects "The Tested" in 2006, Gagnon's work in progress include voice and dance performances for web art, digital video, new medias, and photography. Driven by the desire to continue sharing her life's work with the public, her next projects include a series of self-portraits documenting her journey with terminal breast cancer as well as the co-production of her posthumous website with Studio XX in Montreal. Born in 1959, Francine Gagnon lives and works in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.