Gilles Raynaldy

31st of January to the 9th of April 1999

You arrive into the middle of a construction site, honestly! You can see the foundations, some of which support the building while others are too feeble, too directed, almost to the point of obsession yet necessary and content to exist as pathways towards something else.

I came to Montreal with the strong desire to open up my work to different practices, taking the risk of possibly having to restart at the beginning once again. I did not want to consecrate the three month residency only to continue to do the long and slow series of urban walks I had created over the past two or three years in various European cities.

The result has been a series without conclusion, like those that I made up the two weeks in the month of February where I would systematically place myself in the middle of sidewalks photographing what was in front of me. I recently re-photographed those that could offer something I wanted to use as images to project.

Another series, photographed at the Darling Foundry and the large silos, were taken during a time when I began to see modern and contemporary pieces in the objects. Posed objects, thrown away and abandoned, theatrically placed in a scene? By who? By chance? By someone?

Exhibiting for his first time in Montreal a series of photographs, Gilles Raynaldy has been an artist in residence at Quartier Éphémère in 1999.