Imprimé | Intimité | Collection

Galerie UQO
Curated by Collectif Blanc
January 15 – February 15, 2020

“My library is an archive of longings.”

—Susan Sontag

Collecting books involves minor gestures through which an intimate relationship with the world is built. In our publications, we make the use of bookmarks and postcards, as well as the writing of annotations within the pages. We cut up books to create new ones. Book shelves are filled with objects half-gleaned and plants more or less wilted. Our personal libraries composes everyday arrangement as well as aesthetic corpus. Ideas, memories, and identities are assembled in rhythm with book collecting; spanning eras, history, literature, visual art, eroticism, botanicals, occultism, etc. New narrative threads are spun between the personal and the commun. Libraries become spaces of attention which nurture imagination and construct meaning—individually and collectively. 

Imprimé | Intimité | Collection from Collectif Blanc is presented as an immersive library of mini-collections of publications and objects, the gracious gifts of over fifty publishers, designers, authors and artists. The installation is enhanced by the works of four visual artists which reflect upon such subjects as personal and encyclopaedic archives (Celia Perrin Sidarous), assembling books and collections (Derek Sullivan), as well as the material and sculptural qualities of the printed (Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Bryan-K. Lamonde). 

Collectif Blanc is a Montreal-based curatorial platform founded in 2014 by Catherine Métayer (curator and editor) and Marie Tourigny (curator, artistic director, and graphic designer). Its goal: the promotion of new Canadian and international forms of print publishing. Through the medium of thematic and timely installations, publishing texts and a daily blog, Collectif Blanc wants to stimulate the connection between the public, publishers, curators, graphic designers, and artists. The curators presented their first installation, Édition | Forme | Expérimentation, at Galerie UQO in 2016.

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Exhibition Ephemera &
Installation Photographs

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Photo Credit: Galerie UQO