User Agreement 2016-2017

Solo Show : User Agreement, from March 16 to April 15, 2017. Opening: Thursday, March 16, 5 p.m. @ Galerie Graff, BELGO, 372 rue Ste-Catherine Ouest – Espace 216, Montréal.

User Agreement (exhibition view), 2017, Galerie Graff, Montréal. Photo by Richard-Max Tremblay

User Agreement (exhibition view), 2017, Galerie Graff, Montréal.

With User Agreement, Véronique Savard continues her research on the paradigmatic structures generated by the technicization of languages in the digital age. Her paintings, through textual appropriation and détournement, aim to archive, reformulate and rebroadcast online cultural representations by shedding light on our relationship with others, the world, within a complex media environment. The works’ expressions and patterns highlight the issues inherent to the terms and conditions of online search engines like Google, and various social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn. By replaying textual contents for functionality criteria, community guidelines, and privacy policies, these spark debate over the question of data mining – the automated bulk collecting and analysis of data about the consumption habits and behaviors of users –, as part of advertising and political strategies.

Although for many years now Savard’s work has revolved around an attempt to exhaust digital textualities through painting, with User Agreement the artists renews her visual code, evacuating discursive structures by using colorful plane-spaces and abstract motifs, allusions to symbols used in online conversations (emoticons or emojis) and symmetrical shapes, Savard reveals how our collective imagination was impacted by Big Data.