Programming

A multi-media artist, Jean Dubois positions his practice at the crossroads of new telematic public spaces and interactive artistic devices. With Zones franches, Dubois presents an interactive installation that allows the viewer to literally touch images appearing on a computer screen connected to a video projector. A female epidermis is offered to the path of the finger, to the tactile contact so rarely consented in the works dedicated to the look. The image also converses, sending back the deictic pressure to circuits of words, fragments of sentences, replicas and vocal confidences that follow one another. Like a kind of "dialogical push and pull game", the device leads the viewer into the exploration of both affective and technological boundaries. Not without a certain irony, Zones franches suggests a relationship of proximity between the character and the spectator through a device that replaces real intimate contact. On another level, the installation proposes a reflection on the artistic exploration of the body, memory and the senses through the problematic of new technological media and the upheaval or reexamination that these entail with regard to interpersonal relationships.

During the period of his exhibition, Jean Dubois invites, in collaboration with DARE-dare, several artists to participate in a meeting-debate. The debate will focus on artistic creation using new technologies (computer, internet, fiber optics, etc.) in relation to the problematic of the representation of the body and the phenomenon of memory. This debate aims to encourage dynamic exchanges between artists who share the same concerns or avenues of work and also intends to demystify the creation supported by these new media.

Jean Dubois began his artistic career in the early 1990s. After experimenting with installation and in situ work, he came to conceive and realize artistic interventions in various public spaces. His current preoccupations focus on interactive installation and computer graphics. Jean Dubois holds a master's degree in visual arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal and a diploma of advanced studies in aesthetics, sciences and technologies of the arts from the Université Paris VIII in France. Since 1988, he has exhibited or intervened regularly in Montreal (D.O.G. s'affiche, 1994, Dessin à dessein, 1994, Singulier Pluriels, 1992, among others), in Quebec City (Biennale Découverte, 1991) and elsewhere in Quebec as well as in the Netherlands (Maastricht, Amsterdam), and Japan (Yokohama).