Laurent Lamarche
Biography
Holding a Master in Fine Arts and Media Arts degree from the Université du Québec à Montréal, Laurent Lamarche explores different modes of expression, whether it be photography, sculpture, installations or multimedia arts. His works have been presented in numerous national and international exhibitions, both as solo shows and as part of a group. They are also collected by renowned public organizations and art institutions. Moreover, the artist has created more than a dozen public artworks as part of the Politique d’intégration de l’art à l’architecture.
Artistic approach
Through his work, Laurent Lamarche’s seeks to give form to his views on how relatively blurry the line between nature and fiction can be by using completely artificially created organic forms. To operate this synthesis, the artist realizes a type of osmosis between art and science to transform the real, allowing the viewer to momentarily leave reality and step into an extraordinary and utopian universe. As a result of this convoluted blend of matter and concept, technology and nature, his visual iconography is phantasmagoric, unusual and unique. And such is the photographic series Fossile, Trace, selected for the 2020 edition of the Art Souterrain Festival, which features supposedly enlarged imaginary fossilized organisms, artificial and futuristic specimens that appear to have been placed under the lens of a microscope. In fact, this series is grounded on the idea of ambivalence, more specifically on the double meaning contained in the concept of the record: as the imprint is a relic of past times, it continues to be visible in the present. What if it was an impression left by a new organism? In the end, Fossile, Trace plays with time, an undoubtedly essential element of the hypothesis at the basis of a reset.
