Paul-Emile Rioux CanadaLandcuts
" I question our perception of the urban territory and, more broadly, that of our world, which is increasingly divided between concrete and virtual spaces, between realities and fictions, and between certitudes and chimeras,” explained Rioux about his reasoning for the creation of these images.
Abstract Elements
His lifelong interest in exploring new media technology, as well as his expertise in photography, cast him as a pioneer in digital art, and allows him to develop a virtual matrix from which he extracts his images. He explores in his work a universe that lies at the crossroad of abstraction and the figurative. He invites the viewer to determine, if what he sees is a reflection of reality or imagination. The questions arise about a brave new metamorphic world of habitat for the twenty-first century. He builds future worlds that are conundrums; are they utopian and exhilarating or profoundly dystopian and disturbing? Rioux has a distinct approach and is one of the most innovative artists in digital conceptions and one of the few creative minds able to blend aesthetics research and critical distance. Whether they translate into Dantesque urbanity or the infinite horizon of a turquoise ocean, the urban territory reflected by his creations offer a dystopian view of the world, challenging our attitude towards the environment and the future. Realities or fictions
There is a shifting relationship between space and place, and the way humans think about the environment and nature. This project takes the viewer to places both familiar and alien that could exist in the real world as well as in a virtual one. Rioux mixes and matches reality with invention, through images that he constructs and builds using photography, words, product shots or 3-D models. The end result is to disrupt our perception and to break free from what we know to be true. The images give rise to a play of dissonant readings that oscillates the gaze between the recognition of the familiar contours of a city and the pictorial components of the work that contradict any figurative intention. “Each of my digital images is composed exclusively of abstract elements. The megacities appear to be illusory; they take shape only through the gaze of the spectator who spontaneously seeks to identify what he sees from form and color. I create works offering to see places completely urbanized which are not unlike the futuristic projections stemming from literature and cinema and which propose a dystrophic vision of our possible future. The representation of the world I propose is distinct from this imagery by the fact that it has no figurative intention.” Digital technologies for photographic art Rioux studied cinema at Concordia University, communication at the University of Quebec and at the International Centre of Photography in New York; which led him to the practice of photography. He worked as a professional photographer in the advertising field for nearly fifteen years where he was confronted with challenging technical requirements and had to demonstrate the inventiveness necessary to realize the images he was commissioned to do. The work of advertising photographer encouraged him to explore, in parallel, alternative techniques of expression. This led him to the creation of technologies that were not intended for the realization of works of art as such. His fragmentary views of urbanized territory and panoramas of megacities come from a space-time cut in a digital material transformed in a viral way by algorithms. This process has nothing to do with processing a photograph in Photoshop or a drawing done in illustration software. The result is a totally digital original image with the appearance of a photograph in the heart of which the trace of the real is inscribed. “I wish my works to charm, captivate, disturb and provoke at the same time; I want them to bring about changes that would allow a more enlightened use of the territory in which we live”. Artist and photographer Rioux lives in Montréal, Canada. |
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