Michel Laforest
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
Michel Laforest’s artistic work usually takes form in video or pictural installations. He’s fascinated by cinematographic device and by everything that makes an image. Generally speaking, he questions our relationship to others, to images that surround us and to passage of time. Michel Laforest focuses mainly on the in-between notion. The in-between as the space of transition. A slow and perpetual transition that never stops on terms that compose it. The in-between serves him not only as a theoretical basis, but also as a dynamic principle within his creative work. The images he captures are often minimal stagings presenting choreographed actions then looped. The images chosen by Michel Laforest are often double or even multiple. What interests him is the link between them. That’s why he does not work on one image, but on two or more, with a view to creating a new one, because it’s to the imagination that he addresses himself. Face to face, back to back, nose to nose, he plays with humor to establish new relationships between images. In this way, Michel Laforest tries to create a dynamic space in which he invites the viewer to participate actively, mentally and emotionally to complete the proposal.
Originally from La Tuque, Michel Laforest lives and works in Montreal. His video installation and video performance works have been presented in numerous group exhibitions and festivals in Canada, Brazil and Europe. Among his solo exhibitions at Occurence, Galerie B-312, Bang Centre, La Bande Vidéo, Verticale, La Chambre Blanche (in collaboration with Manon De Pauw) and Dare-Dare. Holder of a master’s degree in visual arts from UQÀM, he teaches at the visual arts department at Cégep Marie-Victorin.