Catalogue > At random

The film Light my fiction is based on images shot on Coney Island, a peninsula just off New York once famous for its legendary amusement park. These images are accompanied by macroscopic shots of the inside of video-game consoles such as the Sony Playstation and Atari 2600. Two diametrically opposed forms of the entertainment industry are thus juxtaposed here: amusement parks (those sites of pilgrimage for fans of thrills and ?life-size? rides) versus personal video games (designed for home use). The contrast of these two forms of entertainment, born of different generations, sheds light on the ?advances? made by the entertainment industry. However, Grandmaison?s pictures do not celebrate the technical prowess of these machines, nor do they even show them in action; instead, Grandmaison dwells on the halted rides, disused, worn and tarnished by time, while the game consoles represent an outmoded, old-fashioned generation already gathering dust, replaced by more sophisticated technology. Compared to amusement parks, playstations nevertheless represent a considerable change in the way entertainment is experienced. Whereas people used to gather to have fun together on huge outdoor rides, the emergence of game consoles has privatized entertainment, consigning it to living rooms and bedrooms. Video games have literally shut down amusement parks, leaving them to rot. Victims of their own success, these video games were soon relegated to ?dinosaur? status themselves, replaced by new, superfast equipment. Light my fiction thus functions like a vanitas of the entertainment world. All things must come to an end, to be replaced by something better as human beings constantly seek something new. The world flows on ? like time (and like the projected images themselves) ? leaving the vestiges of a past era in its wake. Kevin Muhlen Director Casino Luxembourg

Pascal Grandmaison, born in1975, lives and works in Montréal. He holds a degree in visual art from UQAM (Montréal). He is known for the contemplative themes of his large-scale photographs and works in film and video. Capturing a psychological complexity through a minimal and detached view, his diverse subjects range from pensive portrait images to deep meditations on the legacies of modernist architecture. Pascal Grandmaison has exhibited extensively in Canada and Europe. He had numerous solos shows at Galerie René Blouin (Montréal), Jessica Bradley Art + Projects (Toronto), Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), Art gallery of Hamilton, Galerie Georges Verney-Carron and Galerie BF 15 (Lyon, France), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Galerie B-312 and Espace Vox (Montréal). In 2010, he had an important solo exhibition at Casino Luxembourg - Forum d?art contemporain (Luxembourg) in 2006, the Musée d?art contemporain de Montréal that has toured to the National Gallery of Canada. He has also been included in group exhibitions at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Québec), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Vancouver art gallery, Edmonton Art Gallery, Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art (Toronto), the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, Casino Luxembourg - Forum d?art contemporain (Luxembourg), as well as the Prague Biennial 2005. He is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, Galerie René Blouin, Montreal and Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto. www.pascalgrandmaison.com