"Josée Dubeau crée depuis plusieurs années des installations qui sont la matérialisation des arrêtes de volumes en projection dans l’espace* (voir MiroirMiroir). Le spectateur, en déambulant dans le lieu où sont créées ces projections, a en quelque sorte le sentiment de pénétrer dans l’espace même de la représentation, de faire partie de cet espace qui appartient, dès lors, à l’ordre de la pensée conceptuelle. En procédant de la sorte, l’artiste ne donne pas seulement à voir des objets qui se trouvent dans un espace donné; elle reconstitue des procédures intellectuelles, artistiques et historiques qui ont conduit à leur exécution. Dans Light Distance, l’exposition récente qu’elle a présentée à la Patrick Mikhail Gallery d’Ottawa, elle donne à voir des sculptures, des dessins et un enregistrement vidéo qui abordent de façon encore plus fondamentale les conditions culturelles et techniques du modernisme artistique."


Introduction du compte-rendu de Louis Cummins, historien de l'art et critique indépendant, publié dans la revue ESPACE Sculpture, édition double no. 103-104, printemps-été, Montréal 2013

Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa, automne 2012

Bourse du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec


Exposition qui regroupe un ensemble de sculptures en bois peint, des aquarelles réalisées au tire-ligne et une vidéo intitulée JEUX composée de 8 courtes vignettes

The exhibition included sculptures, watercolours and 8 short videos
titled JEUX projected onto the gallery's window.


"This experimental video, Jeux (Josée Dubeau, 2012, 13 min.) is composed of eight playful vignettes, in which performers Véronique Guitard and Hugo Gaudet-Dion act out a series of constructions and deconstructions of the domestic environment. Jeux was filmed and animated using pixilation, and apart from a sequence shot covertly at IKEA, entirely in a studio. In the first sequence, the bare space of the studio is filled up with home furnishings, piece by piece, until a living room set is constructed. The furnishings are all of the cheap, assemble-it-yourself IKEA variety, emphasizing the constructed nature of not just the cinematic mise-en-scène, but of the middle-class home and lifestyle in a broader sense. Once complete, the home scene looks just as fake and sterile as the IKEA showroom from which the furniture was selected. This satirical, Brechtian gesture is complemented by the hyper-acceleration of time provided by the pixilation technique. In addition to playing up the comic element of Guitard and Gaudet-Dion's performances, the pixilation acts as a metaphor for the accelerated speed of life in the modern age, and for the ease of modern living and convenience, empowered by and mediated through technology.


Far from being an uncomplicated endorsement of modern life, however, Jeux aims to show the compartmentalized, empty laziness of modern culture. Once the living room is set up, we see the couple playing games, playing with children's toys, and wrapping presents - the activities of a complicit and privileged culture squandering its free time. Dubeau captures the sense of wasted potential and implicates technology's role in a sequence where Guitard and Gaudet-Dion photograph each other at close range with various cameras, which are similarly treated like toys, used more for the novelty of their zoom lenses than to construct any kind of meaningful self-expression. This scene emphasizes the idea that although technology can bring things closer and make them more accessible to us, it does not automatically empower, or challenge structures of power in society. Dubeau questions the agency we have when our tools of expression are coded as consumer products, and when we use technology as part of our leisure time."


Excerpt from POWER PLAYS - Creative Cities Ottawa 2013
by Christopher Rohde, Programmer at Saw Video

Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa 2012

Grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec


See also the Review published in ESPACE Sculpture by Louis Cummins, Historian and Independent Writer, No. 103-104 (double edition), Spring/Summer, Montréal 2013