SIGHTINGS
SYSTEMS
Launched in 2012 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery’s Permanent Collection, the SIGHTINGS satellite exhibition program was conceived as an experimental platform to critically reflect upon the possibilities and limitations of the modernist “white cube.” As part of this program, artists and curators are invited to develop projects for a cubic display unit located in a public space at the university, with the aim of generating new strategies for art dissemination.
Since 2015, programming for SIGHTINGS has explored an annual thematic—work/labor, pedagogy, and psychopathologies—that re-examines the exhibition display’s formal, conceptual, historical and contextual parameters in light of current sociocultural issues. Focusing on the notion of systems, the 2018-2019 edition addresses how the systematicity of the art world corresponds with that of the real world as considered in its various dimensions (political, social, and economic, among others). Accordingly, this cycle of projects continues the critique of the white cube as a “closed system” at the origin of SIGHTINGS and revisits the legacy of conceptualism by drawing attention to power dynamics, contradictions and flaws inherent to these systems.
The SIGHTINGS program is developed by Katrie Chagnon.
SIGHTINGS is located on the ground floor of the Hall Building at 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West and is accessible weekdays and weekends from 7 am to 11 pm.
LAMPS
May 18 – September 8, 2019
A project by Karine Cossette
This project is a study of the lamp in its most common form. A lamp is a system made up of four primary elements: lampshade base lightbulb and lighting device The project is based on this system. Each of the four primary elements is itself divided into four, allowing for the creation of different lamp variants. Four fabric lampshades are used: conical cylindrical rectangular bell-shaped They are paired with four different ceramic bases: round angular rectangular vase-shaped The pairing of these four lamp bases and four lampshades makes for 16 basic lamp models, each with their own style and identity — in line with the 16 primary personalities identifiable with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. These 16 lamps are equipped with four different coloured lightbulbs: blue green yellow red Lastly, the lamps are either: off during daytime on during daytime on at nighttime off at nighttime The four different lightbulb colours, combined with the four different states for the 16 lamp models, make for a total of 256 possible variations. The 16 lamp models were photographed with variations of lightbulbs and states. In the Sightings cube, these images are displayed in an X-shaped pattern. The code corresponding to a given variation in the displayed image will be written next to it on the acrylic support system. Outside the SIGHTINGS cube a quiz is made available. By responding to it you will discover which lamp best represents you and what it says about you.