Identity is forged by connection with the other in concert with the other’s outlook on us. To realize this project, Gilles Morissette undertook a collaboration with over a hundred students from l'Anse-au-Sable school in Kelowna, pairing younger and older students to create a collective work exhibited at the Alternator. Each student was asked to paint the eye of his or her partner on an ordinary light bulb. The participants also took photographs of each other’s eyes, images that were transposed onto mirrors as part of the installation. Morissette puts the students in the situation of acutely observing each other. In doing so, he is creating the necessary conditions for an awakening of awareness of the other in each of the young participants.
Gilles Morissette works in sculpture, installation, art actions and photography/digital images. The in-situ work is inspired previously by specific elements of the site, be it the architecture, the history and the people who live there.
My art puts in situation beings and the spaces in which we exist. The place that we occupy on earth and the universe, the outlook that we project beyond the visible world. These immersive works allow the participant to become an integral part of the discourse: the being here. I seek to create an experience of space where it is possible to perceive and grasp what it may reveal. It is a face-to-face from which emerges a discourse between light and shadow, the visible and invisible, materiality and immateriality, sound and silence.
Gilles Morissette has exhibited across Canada, the U.S.A., in Europe and Japan. His work is represented in a number of permanent collections, among them the Canada Art Bank, Alberta Art Foundation, Toms Pauli Foundation in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Léopold-Hoesch Museum in Düren, Germany, The Hall of Awa Japanese Paper Museum in Yamakawa, Japan, and the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia - Fundo de Arte DANAE in Madrid, Spain. From 1998 to 2019, he was invited to participate in multidisciplinary exhibitions of the SMCQ Homage Series dedicated to current composers of Quebec.
To learn more, you can visit Gilles’ website here.