PHOTOGRAPHIE at Arsenal Toronto (45 Ernest), to June 9, Friday-Saturday or by appointment. arsenaltoronto.com. See listing. Rating: NNNN
Inaugurating this lofty post-industrial art space, an offshoot of one in Montreal, gallerist René Blouin mounts a show of seven Quebecers who use digital photographic tech but can’t be pigeonholed as photographers.
Science inspires them. Nicolas Baier takes a painterly approach to digitally manipulating photos of nature. He combines many snapshots to depict underground caverns, and an ominous cloudscape that looks like the view from a plane above a storm is actually an enhanced version of scientists’ recreation of weather over Montreal 1,000 years ago.
Isabelle Hayeur digitally places garbage-strewn riverbeds below rusting ships or chemical plants to dramatize pollution. In Pascal Grandmaison’s black-and-white series, galaxies that seem to form from cosmic dust are actually Hubble space photos partially burned in the artist’s barbecue.
If you’re lucky, the ebullient Blouin, a one-man force for Canadian artistic unity, will regale you with tales of how these intriguing images were made.