Informed by microbiology, Laurent Lamarche’s sculptural installations and photographic productions look like living unidentified microorganisms. Their narratives are ambiguous, constantly oscillating between a fascination for the infinitely small and the infinitely large, art and science, fiction and reality. In fact, while Lamarche’s creations might first strike us as scientifically accurate, a second glance casts a doubt as to what we are actually confronted with – the compositions appear somewhat uncanny. Surprise and an additional level of fascination arise when the viewer realizes he is looking at transformed pop bottles and other recycled plastic objects. His recent works explicitly question the relationship between the artist and the scientist. While the scientist observes real data, the factual and visible, to extend human’s knowledge of real phenomena, the artist explores that data to modify it in order to develop a new scientific and artistic paradigm. Born in 1977, Laurent Lamarche lives and works in Montreal. He earned an MFA at Université du Québec à Montréal in 2013.
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