Dominique Blais

Depuis plusieurs années, Dominique Blais s’attache à tisser des liens entre les composantes visuelles et sonores de notre environnement. Travaillant à la limite du perceptible, il explore le lien ténu entre visible et invisible à travers des installations qui questionnent le rapport au lieu, à la mémoire. Par de subtils jeux de transposition, Dominique Blais prend à revers nos attentes et déroute nos sens, les ouvrant à de nouvelles possibilités de perception.

Dominique Blais vit et travaille à Paris. Il est diplômé de l’École des Beaux-arts de Nantes, titulaire d’un DEA Média Multimédia du Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (Paris) et d’un post-diplôme de l’École Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Marseille. Son travail a fait l’objet de multiples expositions personnelles et collectives, notamment au Vilnius Academy of Arts à Vilnius, à Zacheta National Gallery of Art à Varsovie, au Palais de Tokyo, au Grand Palais et au Musée des Arts et Métiers à Paris, à la Villa Arson à Nice ou encore au Mac/Val à Vitry-sur-Seine. Ses œuvres sont présentes dans de nombreuses collections publiques et privées. Il est représenté par la galerie Xippas à Paris.

Dominique Blais + MSAM

Dominique Blais

Infini
Installation objet, Casques, lecteur audio, échantillons sonores, bois laqué 40cm×40cm×200cm
2010

Infini is a combination of two identical headsets. Both headsets were dismantled and then reassembled with one of their respective earphones turned around; they were then juxtaposed so that each pair of earphones nuzzles together in perfect symmetry. Tucked away, an audio player broadcasts a soundtrack composed from VLFs. The intertwining of the two headsets allows fragments of the sound material contained in the earphones to filter through imperceptibly. Using equipment usually intended for a privileged form of individual listening, the work covertly contains the latest samples of natural radio frequencies—inaudible to the naked ear—captured by the artist at the North Pole. The form obtained by the combination of these vintage devices is reminiscent of the symbol for infinity, a loop twisted in on itself, in which we can imagine sound particles moving and lasting forever and ever.

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Dominique Blais

Untitled (Blacks Disks)
Installation Grès d’Utah, moteurs, filins métalliques Jeu complet de 13 éléments 1 disque diam. 36 cm 3 disques diam. 28 cm 9 disques diam. 23 cm
2012

Dominique Blais’s installation invites the visitor to wander in a sound landscape through an archipelago of sandstone records.
Started in 2008, Sans titre (Les Disques) is spread for the first time on the scale of the entire exhibition space. The terra cotta circles are spread for the majority on the ground while some of them are suspended to engines and brush against the static elements. A game of subtle harmonic frictions is created, like a “hypnotic ballet”, a sound poem in random stanzas.
His installations often borrow their materials to everyday objects of light and sound scattering, a material usually camouflaged, but chosen by the artist to place it at the centre of the devices, giving it a strong sculptural presence. Through these receptors, in action or not, Dominique Blais creates scenarios where visible and invisible, audible and inaudible make a dialogue. With a great formal quality, his works attempt to tame intermediate states that, while sharpening our perception, disturb our senses and invite us to listen carefully to things that surrounds us. (Véronique Baton)

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Dominique Blais

Untitled (White Disks)
Installation Grès C, moteurs, filins métalliques Jeu complet de 28 éléments 14 disques diam. 23 cm 14 disques diam. 27 cm
2012

Dominique Blais’s installation invites the visitor to wander in a sound landscape through an archipelago of sandstone records.
Started in 2008, Sans titre (Les Disques) is spread for the first time on the scale of the entire exhibition space. The terra cotta circles are spread for the majority on the ground while some of them are suspended to engines and brush against the static elements. A game of subtle harmonic frictions is created, like a “hypnotic ballet”, a sound poem in random stanzas.
His installations often borrow their materials to everyday objects of light and sound scattering, a material usually camouflaged, but chosen by the artist to place it at the centre of the devices, giving it a strong sculptural presence. Through these receptors, in action or not, Dominique Blais creates scenarios where visible and invisible, audible and inaudible make a dialogue. With a great formal quality, his works attempt to tame intermediate states that, while sharpening our perception, disturb our senses and invite us to listen carefully to things that surrounds us. (Véronique Baton)

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Dominique Blais

L’Ellipse
Installation Installation sonore, 16 micros, 16 trépieds, câbles, carte son firewire, programme informatique sur DVD, Mac-mini Dimensions variables

L’Ellipse is a device composed of sixteen microphones on tripods in a distorted circle, tilted spatially in the manner of an ellipse. Diverted from their original function (as receivers) and connected to the outputs of a computer’s soundcard (not shown in the exhibition space) that broadcasts the audio material, microphones are used ‘vice versa’ as loudspeakers in order to reconstitute an audio clip circulating inside the device and tracing an ellipse in mid-air. The computer program opens sixteen channels in succession, with a speed that accelerates and decelerates (and so on), giving the impression that the sound particles are moving, thereby creating an orbital path in space. By reversing the process of sound diffusion—through the use of recording equipment instead of speakers—the device disconcerts the viewer, a feeling compounded by the repetitive and hypnotic nature of the specialized audio material. The installation’s static appearance contrasts with the kinetics produced by the sound pulses making it possible to simulate the motion of a circle with variable speed. Viewers are literally invited to circumnavigate the work—in so doing, they follow the frequencies’ progression as they walk around the device.

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