INVALID (leslueurs), the first solo exhibit of Montreal multidisciplinary artist Marilou Lyonnais Archambault, is a retrospective exhibit of these two most recent works and visual studies (2016–2018)

The exhibit introduces a journey within the framework of the artist’s two most recent works: Plier des sites internet (Folding Web Pages) and (leslueurs).

Plier des sites internet

Plier des sites internet (“Folding Web Pages”) is a study for the modern age, derived from the post-internet, post-photographic condition. These crumpled web pages are the result of resilience against technological alienation. This photographic series explores the limits of virtual imaging. By projecting web pages onto a folded paper affixed to a wall, Marilou materializes something intangible. These images end up printed in the real world. The artist is interested in this very relationship—or split—between the physical and the digital. By folding internet realities, the artist throws into question the veracity of the virtual image.

(leslueurs)—abstraction and scanner

This corpus of images lies on the artist’s desire to shatter current photographic concepts and take a stand in the face of the evolution of contemporary imagery and the post-photographic condition. Following a reflection on light trapping techniques, the artist started using the scanner as a new tool for images and slides. She then builds an abstraction ecology by wielding the scanner as a light anchoring process. In a time of instant pictures, Snapchat, and fast photos, Lyonnais Archambault uses by way of opposition a behemoth machine (i.e. the scanner) to protest against this degeneracy and create these images. Therein lies the need for a return to more sincere methods of image making, the desire for proto-photos.

A formal exploration of textures, colours, and materials arises. The desire to free the object from its utilitarian attributes, to embody them with a new aesthetic value. For instance, the artist magnifies in this series the richness of graphic qualities in obsolete objects like aluminum foil and plastic wrap.