Stratachrome Green

Stratachrome Green surrounds the viewer with a luminous field of overlapping bodies, objects and cloudlike masses. Its chroma key green evokes a colour used to replace one filmed setting with another. Here, that normally expendable background becomes the substance of the encounter. The work brings green screen imagery into relation with night vision, where technology makes bodies visible through an altered spectrum. Cameras, wrecked vehicles and camouflage share the field with references to the history of representation. These include forms drawn from Duchamp’s The Large Glass and a figure from Dürer’s demonstration of perspective. The panorama makes these different systems of looking coexist. Its scale offers an extensive view while the superimposed imagery resists easy comprehension. Greater visibility can produce confusion as well as knowledge. Developed with curator Marie Ève Beaupré during a residency at Galerie de l’UQAM, the work considers the cultural meanings accumulated within a single colour and the role of images in constructing contemporary power. Read Marie Ève Beaupré’s exhibition text and the original catalogue.