OPTICA is moving!

As soon as next spring, 2014, OPTICA will join five other centres—Centre d’art et de diffusion Clark; l’Atelier circulaire; Diagonale, Centre des arts et des fibres du Québec; Dazibao, Centre d’animation et d’exposition photo; and Occurrence, Espace d’art et d’essai contemporain—to form a new hub of dissemination for the arts in Montreal’s Mille-End district. OPTICA is leaving the 5th floor of the Belgo building in the Quartier des Spectacles for the ground floor at 5445 De Gaspé, a new, more versatile space that will enable the centre to fulfil its mandate while allowing it to better distribute the functions of research, mediation, and exhibition in its programming. The space, the AGORA, which provides greater capacity for groups and the public at large, is dedicated to showcasing and optimizing the OPTICA archives and the interpretation of current shows and any public presentations related to current artistic production.

Gaëlle Choisne, laureate of the Résidence de recherche jeune création, Montréal-Valence

Welcome party, March 13th, 5pm-7pm!

March 9 to May 31, 2014, we are hosting Gaëlle Choisne, a French artist of Haitian origin recently graduated from the École supérieure nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (2013). Choisne’s practice broaches displacement, commitment, absent traces, a colonial past, and the Haitian diaspora. She proposes new restorations, micro-narratives on the traces of a silent history. On the crossroads of sculpture and photography, her installations favour an experiential relationship with materials and refuse.

Publication to come: 3rd installment of the Montreal/Valence residency

This fall, OPTICA and art3 (Valence), host organizations of the research residency exchange program, will begin production of the publication for the third series in the program. The new catalogue, which follows upon the publications Résidence de recherche jeune création Montréal, Valence (France): David Dupont, Diane Morin (2009) and Résidence de recherche jeune création Montréal, Valence (France): Anne-Lise Seusse, Olivia Boudreau (2011), will explore the practices of Laurent Pernel (Lyon, 2011 recipient) and Mathieu Latulippe (Montreal, 2012 recipient).

Juliette Roiné

OPTICA is proud to welcome Juliette Roiné, third-year BFA student majoring in art history at UQAM, who joined the team as an archives trainee. Since her arrival last October, she has helped process digital archives covering a period from 2002 to 2008, indexing more that 250 CDs and DVDs worth of visual documentation. As a result of this applied research, in February 2014, OPTICA will make its first ever digital deposit in the OPTICA Archives. Created in 1992 and located at Concordia University, Records Management and Archives Department, OPTICA’s archival fonds contains the centre’s programming since its foundation in 1972.

Call for applications for artists | Deadline : April, 1st 2014

OPTICA (Montreal) and art3 (Valence) initiated a combined residency and grant program for young artists*. The host organizations’ primary function is to serve as mediator for artists working in new environments, setting up meetings with professionals and organizing public presentations. At the end of the three-month residency, the grant recipient makes his or her work public and a publication is co-produced by OPTICA and art3 the following year.