Philippe-Aubert Gauthier and Tanya St-Pierre Intact au milieu des flammes — Dans une série d'architectures vivantes

From April 23 to June 13, 2026
Opening on April 23 at 6 pm

— Facebook event

Intact au milieu des flammes — Dans une série d'architectures vivantes brings together two multichannel digital animations by Philippe-Aubert Gauthier and Tanya St-Pierre: Dans un état hypnagogique — L'installation and Dans une sorte de rêve éveillé — L’invitation. Taking as their source material an impressive series of collages by St-Pierre made from 70s and 80s interior design magazines, the artists build an ambiance of delirium that contemplates the human drive to domesticate nature, hybridizing inside and outside, nostalgia and futurity, dream and wakefulness.

Such domestic interiors, flattened across glossy magazine pages, were once tokens of modern living. Blossoming out of the same era as neoliberalism, these images of chic bungalows and swanky condos advertised power through the allure of progress and order. In this way, nature’s domestication provided decoration to the acceleration of consumerism and the dissociative processes wherein purchasing and owning nature were favoured over nurturing it. 

Through an intensive visual archaeology of this imagescape, the artists reanimate such hallucinations, bringing them into motion. But here, the tearing, cutting, extraction and assemblage inherent to collage grow and mutate nature's presence. Plants, boulders and fire infiltrate, traverse, invade, and alter the home into new adaptive architectural ambiguities. Spread across slowly unfolding timelines, the artworks sculpt an atmospheric anxiety, but also a dream ambulating through mutating pathways. 

As the gaze hovers from room to room, nostalgia acts out its futuristic impulse. Watching the images seamlessly shapeshift incites an anticipation of what is to come, generating within the imagination a spectrum of possible outcomes. A doomish sound composition is programmed to respond to the fluctuating light, tint, and saturation of the image. Out of an imposed and unsustainable construction, something more cohabitative permeates.

Philippe-Aubert Gauthier is a sound and digital artist, musician, engineer, doctor of acoustics and professor at École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. His artistic approach is based on the interaction between art, culture, science and technology, from a critical perspective. 

Tanya St-Pierre is a visual, sound and digital artist whose practice encompasses computer-generated images, video and installation. Her work, both poetic and conceptual, uses collage and sampling to explore possible relationships between visual or digital arts and narrative.

Each having an individual practice, Philippe-Aubert Gauthier and Tanya St-Pierre have been working as a duo since 2003, combining their interests and specializations. Their work has been presented in Quebec, Canada and internationally, in places like STUDIOTELUS du Grand Théâtre de Québec, CIRCA art actuel (Montreal), IKLECTIC (London), the Foreman Art Gallery at Bishop's University (Sherbrooke), Hako Gallery and Oriental Force (Tokyo), as well as in festivals including Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, and Art Souterrain (Montreal), among others.