Daniel Corbeil creates landscapes that at first glance appear as if they are actual places. The large photographic images in Fragmented Landscapes appear as if they are from aerial photographs taken at great heights and in various seasons. Meticulously spliced together using blue archival tape, the images are scale models of fictional places created by the artist after losing most of his work in a studio fire 1. Inspired by the Abitibi mines in northern Quebec, the models 13 years in the making are also the basis for the large installation piece Complexe industriel that together form the exhibition. The multi-layed work speaks to environmental issues, erasure, landscape, fragmentation, liminal spaces and perception.
The Abitibi region of northern Quebec, where the artist grew up, is known for mining of heavy metals such as gold and copper. These activities drastically mark the earth contamination rendering parts inhabitable. Drawn from memory, Corbeil recreates a cross between a map and landscape or “abstraction and fiction” 2. Scraggly green patches, rock formations, rusty decaying buildings, are actually miniatures strategically placed on contaminated ground then photographed. Fabrication is part of the artist’s process, and is a factor in the act of looking and creating fiction. Traditional western landscapes overlooking vast areas manipulate the eye in a particular direction along a linear plane creating a certain fantasy and upholding a worldview. Corbeil’s satellite observation is one commonly found in the dead image of a Google map. The bird's eye view flattening out the landscape and the human vista is now what was once only accessible by Gods. In this instance, possibly the gaze is of dominance, disconnection, and subordination, nevertheless one of power or powerlessness. Power, because it creates the illusion of all seeing, disempowering as the gaze only has the ability to look, but not affect the circumstances perceived.
The blue tape suspends the landscapes cohesiveness as true documentation, usurping the stability of the image itself, as the eyes are not led but interrupted. Fragmentation resists the static structure of an accurate map allowing for abstraction, the shadows of planes and the geometric shapes of the buildings brings one back to the possibility of a satellite map. The tape marks, the awkwardness of the piecing together and could imply a subtext, as every story has one whether specifically written or implied. Mapping is one of the key strategies in any colonial process, whether by governments, corporations or individuals looking to stake a claim. Shifted to the land as means, place, space to enact power, there is an awareness that this region of Quebec is home to peoples and habitats to other species whose choices were limited and lives continue to be affected by industrial interests. The politics of territory are laid naked in Corbeil’s creation of this neo-landscape, in a neo-colonial world. Any map, through not displaying what is missing acts as a means of erasure and allows for implied and implicated assaults on (non) existing people as they are not part of the narrative of the map. The tape marks the in-betweens of the places, possibly the areas that we miss in the concentration of leaping from one area to the next. Liminal space is where changes take shape, hence the transitions in the artist’s map reveals the illusion of the maps text, when read as symbolic of a particular stance.
In the spirit of Baudrillard 3, the three-dimensional piece Complexe industriel is an epitome for simulation. For this piece, the artist drew from maps that he created from miniatures from his imagination of a remembered place (in the past tense, as areas can change to become unrecognizable, also subjective experience posits important elements accordingly). All references that created the works are separated from the actual reality of the 1970s Abitibi. Foremost, by memory, this imagines basic elements for a believable recreation, documentation which reveals the stance of the observer and the reading by the viewer (or the artist himself) who is left in a state of hyper-reality. The work and its elements and objects are self-referenced. Corbeil successfully interrogates the constructed nature of landscape, and the mediation processes that exist between perceptions and intentions. There is almost a playfulness to the work, reminding us of a desire to control on a massive scale as one manipulated toys in childhood games. Corbeil reminds us that fabrications and simulations are not reality, but have the power to reveal conceptions, intentions, and desires, the model therefore becoming the reality of Abitibi whether real or imagined.
Leanne L'Hirondelle Director / Curator, Gallery 101