Wanderings

Adopting an attitude at once playful and anchored in praxis, José Luis Torres has appropriated the space of the Centre d’art Jacques-et-Michel-Auger in Victoriaville with an installation in situ where everyday objects are diverted from their usual functions in order to evoke displacement and travelling. Construction, assemblage, changes in scale and the artifices of camouflage make these objects

disappear within a labyrinth of cartographic and spatial information.In Errances (Wanderings), symbols that were originally devised for our orientation are transformed into elements designed to trick us and make us lose our bearings. Through the invention of a new topography, the artist installs aesthetic and conceptual elements that arouse wonder in the visitor, inviting him/her to both move and be moved in a place experienced as an object, and among objects that can be apprehended as places.

Aware that movement is also a construction of self, José Luis Torres is mindful of unexpected ramifications and the coexistence of unplanned elements that modify each other and create constantly evolving environments. The correlation between the elements that compose the work and the references borrowed from geography and cartographic science create a space that questions migratory reality, within which displacement induces fragility, instability and the human being’s capacity for adaptation.

Biography

José Luis Torres was born in Argentina and has lived and worked in Quebec since 2003. He holds a Bachelor Degree in the Visual Arts, a Master Degree in Sculpture, and has had training in architecture.His works have been presented in numerous solo and collective exhibitions throughout the Americas and in Europe. He has created several ephemeral public works of art for events, such as Passages insolites in Quebec in 2014 and 2016, and Art souterrain in Montreal in 2017. His recent creations include: ‘D’entrée de jeu’, an immersive work for the young at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in Quebec (2017); ‘Tour de force’, an ephemeral public work of art at the Maison des arts Desjardins in Drummondville (2017) and ‘Débordements’, an ephemeral public work of art in Hamilton, Ontario (2016).