Honorable Mention
BIO
Philippe Boissonnet was born in France in 1957. He is currently a full-time professor in Arts at the UQTR University (Canada). He has been recipient in 1998 of the Shearwater Foundation for the Holographic Arts Prize (New York) and the Recommandation Prize of the ARTEC Biennal (Nagoya) in 1997. Combining the tools and dynamics of technological arts with a long-standing tradition of artists who have chosen to work with light, Boissonnet adopts a two-pronged approach : reprentation and interaction.Since 1983 he has been involved in a number of group and individual exhibitions, both on the national and international level (Europe, USA, Canada, Brasil, Australia, Japan). In 2007, he has been invited by the Argentine Ministry of Culture for participating to an «artist residency» in Antarctica within a group of Earth Sciences Research
Program which was related to the arising global warming issues. New works from the photo/video/holographic series related to Antarctica issues has been exhibited in Buenos Aires, Ushuaia, Mexico and Quebec (Montreal, Trois-Rivieres).
ABOUT «CP/TOMS TOTAL OZONE»
Philippe Boissonnet became aware at Ushuaia (2007) of an urgency to put the world as it should be, starting with the South, as did Nicolas Uriburu, to rid himself of a bias he inevitably carries with him ; that of a Northern view. Many of his holographic globes puts the Southern Hemisphere into relief. In addition to this particular phenomenon of perception, which is at the heart of his artistic expression, this act has proven to be of some political value. He works, as always, on the margin, and the discontinuities between the various forms of artistic expression ; drawing, photography, sculpture, holography, digital imagery. And he floods the imagination with metaphors. Thus, he sees the Earth as a living organism, and acts by merging its image with bodies, tattooed skins for instance, and by identifying it through myths : Gaïa or Atlas, even Galileo. Humans have always been a measure of everything, according to greek proverbs. Today, once again, within the art of Philippe Boissonnet : the North is in the South. Through the way we look at it and the tools we use for it. That’s what emerged from his large scale photographic mural inspired by its journey to Anyarctica (2007), «CP/TOMS, Total Ozone» (a work produced in 2006 with the complicity of the argentine arrtist Andrea Juan).
Philippe Boissonnet and Hervé Fischer, (august 8th, 2009)