Philippe Boissonnet's artistic career began with the creation of large drawings depicting bodies in reconstruction, and between appearance and disappearance. He explored the integration of color Xerox photocopy transfers into drawing (1982-86). He thus obtained the Excellence Award from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (1983). Through this practice of Copy-Body-Art and drawing, he questioned the limits of our perception of reality as much as the inevitable elusiveness of the body for oneself and for others. Then, from 1987, he pushed his questioning of the fragility of our representations, of bodies, towards that of the world, by confronting them with the spatialized and luminous holographic image. From 1992, it is through holographic installations that the “body of the public comes on stage … while the body of the real world meets that of the work” (Isabelle Picher, 2023).

DEFLATING WORLD Series 2018 and 2019

Digital inkjet prints enhanced with pastels, white and colour pencils on Verona paper (Monotypes). 1/1.

The inflatable globe images used for these ink-jet prints were previously created on Canon Laser copiers during a research residency at the MIDE (Museo Internacional de Electrografia) in Cuenca in 1992. These echographic-looking images make me think of a Child-Earth, and no longer a fragile-appearing Mother Earth. I enlarged some of them with in-jet printing for creating visual metaphors related to the current state of ecoanxiety affecting us nowdays, but which I already felt strongly from the 90s, at a period when the Earth Summit (Rio, 1992).

(Above) « Deflating World #1 », 2018, 103 x 103 cm (with frame) . Ink-jet print and white pencil on Verona paper). Edition 1/1
(Under) « Deflating World #6, #7, #3 and #2 » (63 x 63 cm with frame), 2018-2019 - White pencil drawing and ink-jet digital print on Verona paper. 1/1)

View of the « retrospective» exhibition at La Factrie 701, Shawinigan, Qc (nov. 2023)

Photos © Lorraine Beaulieu et Christine Berthiaume

À L’OMBRE DES GRANDS MODÈLES Series
1987-88

Holograms (in reflexion and transmission) on glass, plexiglass, acrylic paint and pastels on wood and canvas.

Questionning the holographic media and its in-between aesthetic qualities. Variable dimensions. Exhibited first at « Image du futur » show, Cité des arts et des technologies, Montreal, 1987

Technical support: Fringe Research Holographic Lab (Toronto) / Holograms dimensions: 30 x 40 cm)

SIMULATIONS Series
1984-86

“In this series, each drawing is a simulation of a nonexistent photocopy, which is impossible in its given format and in the actual state of the machines available. It is the xerographic result that becomes the model to imitate, the original to duplicate, by magnifying its proportions, its imperfections, and its accidents...” (Monique Brunet-Weinmann, in Philippe Boissonnet, le métissage est le message, Vie des arts No 123, June 1986)

Graphite drawings, colour pencils and Xerox photocopy transfer

AU REGARD D'UN CORPS Series
1982-83

Graphite and Xerox photocopy transfer on Hi-Art board

« This series of works, comprise drawn, photographed and photocopied body parts of the artist’s own figure. This hybrid appropriation of poses consecrated by Western art history, offered plural readings of the notions of original and the multiple, and of the way they structure and condition the manner in which we apprehend the real ».

Laurier Lacroix, 1992 (in Philippe Boissonnet, The mediating Eye - 1983-1993 - Centre Copie-Art, Montreal)