FUTURS SPÉCULAIRES

Workshop: Dessine-moi le futur !

For children aged 8 to 14.

Arsenal Contemporary Art Montreal is proud to present Futurs Spéculaires, Sabrina Ratté’s first institutional solo exhibition in Montreal. Organized in collaboration with the gallery ELLEPHANT, this exhibition brings together recent works exploring the relationship between nature and technology, the multiple perspectives that define reality, utopia, and dystopia, and how existence seems increasingly to find its bearings in the virtual realm. The artist approaches these themes through aesthetic, poetic, and philosophical means, privileging reverie, intuition, reflection, and feeling as modes of address.

If the specular describes the physical properties of light as it is reflected on the surface of a mirror, for the artist it is also an opportunity to reverse temporality. By selecting and transforming analog signals and integrating them into her videos, Sabrina Ratté uses light from the past to build hypothetical futures, which are then reflected in the present through her installations. In these materialized, dream-like utopias that invite contemplation, the boundary between the real and the virtual is constantly put into question through various exhibition devices where light, iridescence and the play of reflections become the link between these two realms.

Sabrina Ratté conceives the digital image as an abstract and malleable material that allows her to paint with light and sculpt electronic signals. This formal approach enables the emergence of ecosystems that unfold in interactive installations, sculptures, video series and digital prints reflecting the diversity of her practices.

Oscillating between the real and the imaginary, the works on display invite us to speculate about the future and reveal a hypothetical world in which humans have been annihilated. This journey across subliminal landscapes guides us towards a virtual future imbued with an aura of futurism. Through each screen, like paintings evolving out of time, the viewer is invited to cross over to the other side of the mirror and migrate towards contemplation. Is humanity not the fragmented reflection of a larger reality? 

Sabrina Ratté lives and works in Montreal. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Pompidou Center (Paris, France), the Laforet Museum (Tokyo, Japan), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Canada), the PHI Centre (Montreal, Canada), the Chronus Art Center (Shanghai, China), the Gaîté Lyrique (Paris, France), and the Museum of the Moving Image (New York City, United States). Her work is part of several institutional and private collections, including those of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. Sabrina Ratté is represented by the gallery ELLEPHANT in Montreal.

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