June 19 – 22, 2024 | 11 – 6PM ET
Opening reception: Thursday, June 20, 5 – 8PM ET

Art is Like a Game by Pierre Tremblay integrates 360° video projection and multiple CRT televisions to create a constellation of perspectives on art practice - in the process offering an immersive experience which reflects the evolution of digital means of production. Drawing on a rich assemblage of multi-channel portraits executed by Pierre Tremblay between 1984 and 2024, the installation creates a quasi-conversation involving the subject, the viewer and the artist himself, woven on the grounds of rules of engagement.

Including artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Ian Carr-Harris, Anna Ridler, Jake Elwes, Max Dean, Lisa Steele, Francoise Sullivan and many others, each narrative in the portrait series is a unique point of departure into a fractal conversation: more than 100 emerging and established figures discussing their ideas about art and art practice.

Anchored in Marcel Duchamp’s quote, “Art is a game between all people of all periods,” and Michael Snow’s response, “Art is like a game, every time I feel like I’m going to lose, I change the rules,” the exhibition underscores the ritual of making, much like a game that operates within a set of rules that can be both altered and broken. This way of operating reflects the adaptive and resilient nature of art making, which continues to redraw its own borders through a dynamic process of negotiation and reinterpretation.

Emerging from the constant fluidity that ceaselessly reshapes the definitions and discourse of art, each artist’s perspective is both meticulously arranged and ambiguously chorded, adding layer over layer to both demystify and complicate the rules of art making.

Art is Like a Game celebrates the energy and transformative nature of art. It showcases the myriad ways in which artists perceive and interact with the world, offering viewers a glimpse into the diverse motivations and methods that drive artistic engagement beyond the exhibited objects. This exhibition highlights the enduring dialogue and the endless possibilities that arise when the rules of the game are continuously reimagined.

Curated by Minwoo Lee
Visual lead support by Julia Zolota
Music by Alex Geddie

This program is presented as part of IA Gateway 2024.

ABOUT THE ARTIST 

Pierre Tremblay is an interdisciplinary artist and an educator based in Toronto. His practice combines new technologies with video, interrogating the changing flux of perception. Tremblay’s work can be found in Paris in the collections of the Musée Carnavalet, the Bibliothèque nationale, and the Musée Rodin, as well as the Louise Bourgeois Archives, housed at the Easton Foundation in New York.

Tremblay is a Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Exhibitions of note include 300 Days of Indulgence – Negotiating with the Beyond, Continuum, Portraits in a Sentence, Pools, Meta Incognita at The Photographers’ Gallery – The Wall, London, England and Dans la nuit des images, at the Grand Palais, Paris, and recently at CICA Museum in Seoul and the 2023 Pingyao International Photography Festival in China. Many of his films explore artistic practice, including collaborations with Max Dean, Michael Snow, R. Bruce Elder, Elena Mazzi, Jonas Ersland, Magali Desbazeille, Jessica Auer, Maralynn Cherry.

Image courtesy of the artist.