Mathilde Forest and Mathieu Gagnon
at Bonaventure

EXHIBIT

Red Hook: Pieces and Traces

Near the tourist information center (boardwalk) | 93 Avenue de Port-Royal | Bonaventure

Mathilde Forest and Mathieu Gagnon, Montreal (Québec) | gagnon-forest.com

In 2017, Mathilde Forest and Mathieu Gagnon took off in search of buildings threatened with disappearance in Red Hook, a rapidly changing industrial Brooklyn neighborhood. Like many present-day big cities, it is facing important real-estate pressure, which is radically altering its landscape. In photographs, the abandoned and buildings coveted by developers offer a portrait of what is living on borrowed time: the past, and with it, collective memory.

Born of a collaborative undertaking with the residents of the neighborhood, their pictures are the visible part of a quest both architectural and human, founded on dozens of interviews carried out with citizens of Red Hook. The duo then combined photography with the technique of photogrammetry, generally used in the fields of architecture or engineering. On the basis of these three-dimensional shots, here diverted from their normal purpose, the two artists have composed a gallery of almost abstract phantom shapes. The buildings become the key figures of a chaotic city, playing a less silent role than it might appear.

EXHIBIT AT RENCONTRES

Red Hook: Pieces and Traces

Mathilde Forest and Mathieu Gagnon have collaborated since 2014. Their interest is in the collective imagination surrounding architecture and vacant spaces, between the use of image and sociology.

Hailing from the Gaspé Peninsula and the Lower St. Laurence respectively, they live and work in Montreal. Their recent work has been exhibited primarily in Montreal and Québec City, as well as in Japan and the U.S. Their latest creation residency took place in Brooklyn, New York.

Entering the fragile places of chaos

CHAOS reflects on a planetary environment undergoing profound change. Affecting both towns and nature, chaos operates in a more muted way in jeopardized areas: northern aboriginal territories captured by Elena Perlino and Éli Laliberté; tourism in India, by Martin Parr; accelerated urbanization in Brooklyn studied by Mathilde Forest and Mathieu Gagnon; or in the Gaspé Peninsula, the marks of a long-gone mining operation or a railroad documented by Myriam Gaumond and Martin Becka. Together, they are all revealing of those threats that pervade the landscape and the existence of each one of us today.